The Gillens.net

This Memorial Day weekend, my friend Brad and I joined about a dozen other triathletes for an incredible 2 days of cycling in th Ouachita Mountains in eastern Oklahoma. The main purpose of this trip was to prepare us for the mountain climbing (and descending) that we’ll experience in Adirondack Mountains when we race Ironman USA (IMLP) in Lake Placid, NY on July 20th, 2008.

Saturday

We left about 7:40am and it was already quite humid. The first 5 miles or so were flat and provided a nice warm up. Then we hit some nice 5-7% grades for a few miles which is exactly the type of grades we’ll experience in IMLP. The roads were smooth, the grades reasonable, and I was happy as this is exactly what I wanted. After 35 minute or so, we re-grouped at this park lodge and let everyone catch up. Then, the steep grades started! Probably a good 2 miles of 9-12% grades! It took me about 13 minutes which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is when your HR is in Zone 5 (182), your cadence is around 50 rpm, and your speed is around 6 mph! I had never done a climb like this and it was tough.

Following this initial steep climb were greeted with several other steep, but shorter ones throughout the first 30 miles. Seeing the steep, long climbs appear in the distance was quite intimidating and could easily deteriorate your mental attitude. “We have to climb that. You must be kidding. Surely, that’s some other steep side road, right?!”

However, the most terrifying experience of the whole weekend occurred not on one of the monstrous climbs, but on the first steep descent. Within seconds, my speed went north of 40 mph and all of sudden my front wheel starts to wobble and shimmy violently out of control! I apply the brakes, but I don’t appear to slow down much and the shaking is just getting worse! I was absolutely terrified and I just had all those scary images of Tour de France riders having horrendous crashes on the descends in Alps! I just knew I was going down and it was going to real bad. It felt like my front wheel was completely loose or something, like I didn’t clamp it down tight and it was just rattling around in the fork! I thought it might fly off my fork any minute and that would be it! Somehow, I kept control and stayed upright and managed to slow down finally. I came to a complete stop at which point my legs were trembling out of control from just nerves! It took a few moments to check over my bike and everything looked OK. I figured I might have been applying the front brake to hard or something or that maybe my wheels were out of true. Either way, I really had no choice but to continue, and after a few seconds to regain my nerves, I started down again. Although this time, I rode the brakes pretty good and didn’t get too close to 40 again for quite a while.

Later, I research this phenomenon and found out that it might not have anything to do with my wheels or brakes, but simply a condition that happens based on my position on the bike. See this article. It claims that “unloading the saddle” will stop the shimmy! Man, I wish I would have know this 2 days ago. Other articles also suggest applyling pressure to the top tube with one or both knees. I will try both of these tricks if and when this terrifying shaking happens again. Needless to say, I will also have my bike tuned up before IMLP, including a truing of the wheels and new brake pads!

I’m really glad I experienced this for the first time in practice and not during a the race. I think my previous fastest speed was about 42 mph I hit in a local rally a few years ago, but that was on my old road bike. I’ve probably never been above about 34 mph or so on my tri bike. Later on Saturday, I actually regained some resemblance of manhood when I had the courage to get up to about 45 mph! That was the fastest I’ve ever been on a bike!

Overall, I enjoyed the ride. I actually like the climbs better than the descents. The views were quite pretty despite the mist that limited our visibility to a good degree.

Stats for the day: 100.1 miles in 6:05 for a 16.4 mph average and a 157 avg HR

Saturday evening we had an incredible grill out! Some people brought meat and veggies to grill, while other made pasta salad and such and we ended up having quite a feast. It really hit the spot after a hard day. It was fun to “talk triathlon” and just hang out with a good group of people!

Sunday

A much smaller group (5) of us went out for some more on Sunday. I wanted to get in 4 more hrs to really take advantage of this good long climbs that we just don’t have any where close to the Metroplex. We started the same route as Saturday and even climbed that initial steep 2 mile stretch, but after that we headed down the other side of 271 which turned out to be really nice. None of us had been down this way, but Larry had the good point that b/c this road was a highway it should have smaller grades than the Byway, and he was right. It was perfect practice for IMLP b/c there actually aren’t any really steep climbs at IMLP. I think a 1 mile 8% climb is about as bad as it gets at IMLP, so I really wanted to practice the 5-7 % climbs that would simulate that typical IMLP profile. 271 provided just that.

On the way back S on 271, there was nice long 2.6 mile climb that was about a 6% grade. It took me about 15 minutes to climb it the first time. I did it a 2nd time in 17 minutes when I took it easy and kept my HR below 150, and then on the 3rd time (after 3 hrs of riding), I really pushed it, elevating my HR to over 160 and I did it in about 14.5 minutes. Not that much faster, but I was happy I had the mentally toughness to push a hard climb after 3 hrs of riding an 6 the day before!

One of the happiest moments in my 2 months of training occurred during the last 30 minutes of today’s ride. I was done with the climbs, and I was cruising downhill on the flats just thinking to myself that this is what IM training is all about: Enjoying the training and enjoying the journey of even getting to the starting line! I had an incredible sense of accomplishment stemming from that fact that I just put in 160 miles and over 10 hrs of training this weekend to cap off my first ever 20 hr week! And I was still smiling and actually enjoying myself at the end of it! It was one of those times that I’ll remember as a highlight of all my IM training and one of my favorite moments when I look back on this whole experience.

Stats for the day: 60 miles in 4:00 for 15 mph average and only a 148 avg HR (This didn’t include the long flat stretch from Saturday, so my average speed is slower)

This whole weekend will go a long way in preparing me for IMLP.

Fran at the start

First 2 finishers

First Female

This Saturday morning at 8am, the 5th annual Wellington Family Fun Run was held at the WAC. While I have yet to actually run in this race, I’ve always tried to support it in some form or fashion as it’s literally right in my backyard. Last year, I rode the lead bike to make sure the lead runners stayed on course, and this year I simply took some photos and videos while cheering runners on!

We were blessed with beautiful weather and an exciting finish this morning. The first 2 finishers came in almost side by side as they sprinted to the finish. I think everyone had a good time, and I look forward to supporting next year’s event.

My complete set of pictures and videos are in this PicasaWeb Album.

Bike Box	Cyndee at Flower Fields	Flower Fields
Pre-race backpacker	Just before swim start	Sunny Oceanside, CA

This past weekend I traveled to San Diego to see my sister, Cyndee, and competed in my first triathlon of the year, the Ironman California 70.3 in Oceanside, CA.

AA canceled over 200 S80 flights on Wednesday due to some electrical wiring safety issues and this wrecked havoc on my standby travel plans, and thus the only way I could get to Southern California on Wed. evening was to fly into Palm Beach (PSP), 2.5 hours away from my sister’s apartment. I felt really bad making her drive all the way out there, but I really needed to get there on Wed. night instead of Thursday. I made it OK and Cyndee picked me up just fine. She wasn’t even that pissed off like I would have been.  She’s a great sister.

On Thursday, I was forced to wait around most of the day at Cyndee’s apartment for FedEx to delivery my bike box. I couldn’t have picked it up at their facility b/c the huge box would not have fit in her Camry. It finally came around 5pm, and I put it together quickly to make sure nothing got damaged during shipping. Everything checked out OK, and I was happy to have my bike in CA for the first time ever! That evening, we went into Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego and walked around a bit before settling on a nice Italian place for some good carbo loading.

On Friday, I got up early and drove to Mission Bay for a final brick workout before the race. It was really cool to bike around Mission Bay and Beach. I didn’t care too much about getting in much of a the workout as I was just making sure my re-assembled bike rode OK while enjoying the simple pleasure of biking along the beach boardwalk. There is something magical about biking along the beach. It was my first time to ever do this, and I won’t soon forget it

We then drove the 30+ minutes from SD up to Oceanside and went to the expo and packet pickup. Cyndee was kind enough to wait in registration line for me while I chatted it up with some online friends. Following packet pickup, we took a short jaunt over to Carsbad, CA and went to the Flower Fields. This 50 acre field of flower was incredible, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, taking pictures almost every minute! For Cyndee’s sake, I’m really glad we were able to do something new and fun that didn’t involve triathlon.  After stopping for quick lunch at an awesome huge salad bar called Souplantation, we made it back to her place just in time to see UT whoop up on Stanford!

Saturday was race day and I won’t bore you with all the race details, but if you  really want them you can read my full race report here.  To summarize in one sentence: While the ocean harbor swim wasn’t as cold as expected, the hills and headwinds on the bike course tired my legs enough to force me to have a sub-optimal run. Despite some tough mental spots on the bike and run, I’m still happy my overall performance. I’m also happy to have snagged an Ironman Lake Placid (IMLP) slot for July 20th, 2008. This was one of the main reasons I did this race.

I, however, was not the star of this weekend. That award goes to my sister Cyndee. She was very supportive the whole weekend especially on Saturday when she got up at 3:30am with me and then spent the whole day cheering me on at the race; over 15 hours! She put up with me converting her breakfast room into my own personal triathlon staging area. She even slept on an air mattress so I could get a good nights rest. I feel kinda bad that this trip was pretty much all about the race, but I still enjoyed visiting with her and her love and support reminded me how lucky I am to have such a wonderful sister.

Turner Falls Overlook	Sarah over Turner Falls	Turner Falls
David at the Falls	Polar Bear Plunge	David @ Rockledge

Sarah and I took full advantage of our long Easter weekend in 2 major ways: a trip up to Turner Falls on Friday and a “Polar Bear Plunge” on Saturday.

On Friday AM, We drove about 1hr 45 mins up to Turner Falls. We parked inside the park and then I headed out for a 2hr ride in the Arbuckle Moutains while Sarah started a fun hike around the park. The riding was great as I found 2 hills that were about twice as long as anything I’ve found in the Metroplex area. I did about 6 hill repeats of 7 minutes of sustained climbing each. The roads were generally smooth and overall it was great ride. Sarah thoroughly enjoyed herself hiking around the park capturing many of these wonderful pictures. She even found a few ponies to play with. After about 2 hrs, we met back up at the car and enjoyed a lovely picnic in the perfect spring weather. Afterwards, we continued hiking for a couple of more hours so I could have a chance to explore more of the park. It was an awesome day.

On Saturday AM, we met a group of about 15 triathletes for an open water swim in Lake Grapevine followed by another ride. The water was quite cold (~63 degrees) as you could imagine, but I managed better than last weekend when I did the same thing. I swam almost 1.5 miles and this was the perfect practice that I needed for my 70.3 mile triathlon next weekend in the San Diego area. Afterwards, we changed out of our wetsuits and into our biking clothes and headed out for a 34 mile ride. It was the first time on the Flower Mound country route for many of the riders and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Sarah was very kind and gracious to lead the more in-experienced riders so that I and other veteran riders could ride our own speed. She’s the best and it wouldn’t have been the same without her.

A great weekend.