Day 4 – 183 beats

Well, so far so good. I've made it 4 days without giving up. Surely I can make it another 363ish days until the next Norseman. As long as I have the prospect of new kit for my bike along the way, I should be able to remain motivated. And speaking of new kit, I'm about to order a new wetsuit for swimming in open water! Hopefully I can float. Honestly, I think that only half the reason for having a wetsuit here is the cold water. The other half is for protection against jellyfish. I don't really care for jellyfish (although they are tasty) but then I guess no one does.

Today's 'training' has consisted, so far, of about 30km of biking. Once again, I found wearing a heart rate monitor mesmerizing. 'Ooo! Ooo! How high will it go? 183? That seems pretty high." Yes, I hit my theoretical max. It certainly didn't seem that stressful and best of all, I didn't go blind. Tomorrow, I'll try for 184 (making me feel like a 36y old).

That's all for now. Dinner and a short run (who would've thought) to follow.

Day 3 – Time to put the fenders on the bike…

Once again I managed to sleep in. Thankfully, I had no intent to get up early. It was supposed to rain and I had planned on going in to the office to do a bit of work. Much to my surprise, however, it’s not raining (much). Maybe I’ll put the fenders back on the bike and go out for another ride. Maybe not. My legs are still a bit sore from the ride and run that I went on yesterday. I had worried about the run. Although it was short, I did discover that heat moldable insoles make a difference for people like me who have a large amount of pronation in their ankles. I wore them both on the bike ride and for the (short) run and, much to my surprise, my knees and shins experienced no discomfort! A feeling that I haven’t enjoyed in a long time. Investing in a proper pair of orthotics, fit by a podiatrist may be in my future.

Day 2 – Only 365 days left

At 5am this morning the 2008 Norseman iron-distance triathlon began. I was sleeping. In fact I slept until noon today. Getting up for a 5am race start is something else that I’ll need to train for. It’s not that I don’t like mornings, it’s just that I have trouble going to sleep early when there are so many interesting things to read and research. I’m told that this was also my ‘problem’ in university.

Anyway, after a leisurely noon start, I made an appointment to go look at a Felt B2 time trial bike. I have never ridden a proper time trial bike so thought that I’d least see whether I could even ride one. This one was pretty sweet (although a couple of years old). With it’s Zipp 999 wheelset and aero frame it was begging to be ridden – fast. The problem is, I’m not terribly fast. So, after a quick and enjoyable ride I decided that it is probably best that, if I’m going to ride a fast looking bike, I’d better have the legs to match.

Although I didn’t purchase a bike, there were a few other things that I needed to get out of the way before I could go out for a late afternoon ride. I’d been looking for a waterproof bicycle computer while on vacation last week in Canada but no one seemed to sell them. The salespeople were nice but they didn’t seem to understand that if you want to ride a bike in Norway, you will get wet. Very wet. My last one had failed because of ‘water ingress’ (not to mention the parking garage incident) and I wanted to be sure that my next one would not suffer the same fate. Enter the Sigma 1706HR. It was advertised as ‘watertight’ plus it came with a heart rate monitor. Something that would be useful to see how little I actually work my heart on an average bike ride. As with everything in Norway, it seemed overpriced but I bought it anyway.

After taking my new kit home, I feverishly installed the computer and pumped up my tires (with my new pump) and headed out for a spin. It worked like a charm. The first few km were rough as the computer kept losing contact with the heart rate monitor but it worked perfectly for the next 35. Although I now had a way of training my heart within target ranges, I started to wonder about the safety of such a device. I’m a bit of a tech weenie and found that I couldn’t stop looking at the heart rate display – even if it meant running off the road. What I would suggest to Sigma (and I would buy one of these) is that they design a set of ‘head up display’ cycling glasses. The whole thing could be wireless and it would probably save a few lives. Remember, safety first.

Day 1 – My ass feels okay

A couple of months ago, I made the mistake of trying to leaving a parking garage with my bike attached to the roof of my car. Although the noises were horrific (as the bike and racks were scraping along the roof of the car), two good things came out of it. My non-waterproof (a bad idea in Norway) bike computer was trashed and my seat was scraped up. I had the perfect excuse to buy a new saddle and bike computer. Tonight, I put the new seat on and went for a spin. The seat is a Selle San Marco Skn something-or-other that I fully expected to be a literal pain in the butt. After a 30-40km (I still haven’t replaced the computer yet) ride however, I really like the saddle. It’ll take a bit of breaking in but the split design in the back seems to work. Going over low frequency bumps, though, is a bit like driving an older Skoda – your back end bounces around a lot.

7 kilos?

It’s said that the average norwegian eats more than 7kg of potato chips a year. Although it’s less than the american average of nearly 10kg, it still seems like a shitload* of potatoes. I read it in a newspaper a few days ago so it must be true.

Anyway, I started thinking about this and realized that if I was the average Norwegian (impossible because I’m Canadian), I’d be a Russet myself by the time I was 40. And, since that’s only 3 years away, I thought that I’d better do something to prevent the transformation from occuring. Quiting potatoes ‘cold turkey’ seemed out of the question so I decided on the next best thing – training for what is arguably the world’s toughest ironman triathlon. The benefits would be several-fold; the swimming would build some upper body strength, the biking would tone my legs, and the running would bring some level of humility. But the best part was that I could continue to eat (gluten-free) Pringles. If I was lucky, I might even be able to increase my intake to match the american average.

So with the tough part out of the way, I only have to figure out how I can possibly train for a 3.8km swim, a 180km bike ride, and a marathon run… through the mountains of Norway… in one year. My only triathlon to date was a 2/40/10km race that I did when I was 17. I was last out of the water, but passed a shitload* of people on the bike, and was humiliated on the run. Still, I finished in the middle of the pack so how hard could an ironman be?**

I have no idea if this is a realistic goal or not but I’m hoping that by keeping a blog of my progress that I’ll stay motivated. Only 365 days left…

* The official definition of ‘shitload’ being more than a dozen but less than a mole (of potatoes)
** Said with a note of sarcasm