Vienna 2

No exciting developments here in Vienna. However I feel the need to address a couple of classic Austrian stereotypes:
1) Yes, as you can see in exhibit 1, some of the locals do dress strangely.

2) No, the Danube is not blue. In fact is a rather muddy looking river.

Also, I wanted to share this strange image from the Gilead stand at the conference. I am guessing that it is a liver but who knows. Please send you thoughts to john.martin@gilead.com. I am sure that he would love to hear from you.


The last couple of days have been busy which has made it hard to train. The swimming pool has been filled but the staff are very insistent that I cannot use it until May 1st - the day I leave. Another stereotype comes to mind...

Vienna I

After an early start from Fraser's place, I made it here without any problems. The hotel, a Hilton, is based by the Danube in a residential area 5 miles or so out of the city and several miles from the conference centre. It is one of those bland hotels that is in serious need of updating. Fortunately, it has wifi, but much to my despair, the pool is empty, and there are no plans to fill it anytime soon. I asked the staff where I could swim, and they suggested the jacuzzi. Not really what I was planning on doing. Anyhow, there is a small gym with a bike and rowing machine so all is not lost.
I have never been to Vienna before and apart from the Sigmund Freud and the Mozart connections, I don't really know much about it. After spending the afternoon wandering around the city, I don't really know much more. Here is a random picture from downtown Vienna. It is very germanic but also reminded me a little of Amsterdam and Paris in parts. There were a lot of tourists. I managed to get a little lost on the trams and ended up several miles off course. Naturally it had to rain when I decided to get off and try to retrace my steps. The conference starts up properly tomorrow.

Vienna Bound

Next week will find me in Vienna attending a conference on liver disease. It is the first time that I have travelled far since starting this crazy training program. I have purposely avoided travelling so that I can concentrate on my training. However, it was hard to turn this job down. The conference, an annual event which I have been to for the last 5 or 6 years, rotates to a different european city each year. From a business perspective it is a great opportunity for me to network, and keep up with the field. Usually it is also a chance to catch up with a bunch of friends but it seems like few of them will be there this year.
So my challenge for next week is keeping up with my training program. It looks like my hotel has a gym and a pool so I am reasonably optimistic about it. I just have to get over the jet lag.
I have one other challenge this week - an old skiing injury has been playing up. Basically this means that I am not running for a week as I let it settle down. It is an odd injury in that it doesn't stop me from cycling. It was probably the result of me being a little overtired following the 1/2 IronMan the other weekend, and maybe, based on the results of a nutritional assessment that I had in the week, because I am a little undernourished. It seems like I am not getting enough protein into my diet which combined with the slow recovery could have exaccerbated my leg. Looks like I will be eating a lot of fish in the coming weeks. Let's hope that I don't get mercury poisoning as a result.

1/2 IronMan Weekend 2

On Friday, Graeme, Andrew and I escaped from the city and drove down 101 to Lake San Antonio. The ride was uneventful other than for a pit stop at Denny's in King City where I loaded up with fish and chips, onion rings and a vanilla milkshake in preparation for Saturday's big event. King City was one of the places that we had camped last summer on the AIDS ride.
As expected it had started to rain, and by the time we got to the camp site things were looking gloomy. Fortunately, we found a decent spot to camp in near some of the IronTeam who had established quite a nice little set up. I quickly realised that I was out of my league when it came to camping. Apart from my tri gear, all I had bought was a tent (borrowed from Brandon), a sleeping bag and food. Everyone else had come better prepared. Most had larger tents with annexes, camping chairs, and cooking stations. One team had even brought a generator and a TV. It is hard to believe that they could not go without TV for the weekend.
I had a very restless night. For some reason, I do not sleep very well when I am camping. The rain didn't help as I was worried about touching the sides of the tent and letting water in. Also, we had to get up at 5:30 which played on my mind a little.
Come 5:30 AM it seemed like most people were already up and about. It was wet but the rain had stopped. It was odd eating breakfast standing in the dark by my car. I had pre-prepared a bowl of oatmeal overnight which tasted rather good.
By 6:15 we had driven down to the lakeside to get our gear sorted out and our transition stations set up. As it became lighter it also became apparent that the lake was covered in fog. Obviously this was a big problem as nobody could see where we were going to be swimming. After some discussion, our coach Tom declared that we would swim a modified course consisting of four shorter loops. This was a little disapointing in that the distance turned out to be a little shorter than the 1.2 miles that were originally planned.

The lake was cold but nowhere near as cold as the Bay. It only took a few minutes to adjust to adjust to the temperature, afterwhich it felt fine. The swim went well. As the course was shorter there were a lot more turns to negotiate and more jossling to contend with which was fine by me as I need to get used to this. After four loops, I headed back to the shore and over to the bike transition.
The bike ride was a tough but scenic 56 miles. As we climbed out of the valley the fog lifted and the sun came out. It was great to see blue sky after so many weeks of rain. The course was rather hilly. The first 2/3rds were made up of rolling hills over which I managed to keep an average speed of 17 mph. The latter part of the ride was more challenging. At about mile 40 we encountered 'Old Nasty', a notorious hill, with a false top. In fact it had two false tops which nobody had warned me about. The hills took their toll on my overall speed which dropped to 16 mph. Overall, I completed the bike course in 3 hours 25 minutes.
The run was something else. It started off well with the first couple of miles around the edge of the lake but got tougher as we headed inland and up onto some rain drenched meadows. Some of the hills were just too steep to run up. However, apart from a couple of short walks, I managed to keep running at a steady sub-10 minute mile pace. After about 9 miles we were back on the road running down a long hill only to have to turn around and run back up it again. The run was rather lonely as I only saw one other runner until we rejoined the road. For some reason I kept thinking about mountain lions.
I completed the run in 2 hours 5 minutes, a little under 10 minutes per mile, which I was extremely happy about considering how hard the course was.
In all, the course took about 6 hours 20 minutes with transitions. I came in 9th out of the 100 or so of us that participated. Overall, I am quite pleased with how things went especially as this is supposed to be one of the hardest 1/2 Ironman courses in the country.

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. On Sunday we manned a waterstop for another TNT team who were running a 1/2 marathon in preparation for the Wildflower in a few weeks time. It was quite a hoot. Apparently we could be heard for some way off.

1/2 IronMan Weekend

I am currently preparing to leave for a weekend of camping in the rain so that I can participate in a 1/2 IronMan (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride and 13.1 mile run). I am working my way through an enormous list of things that I will need to get me through the weekend which is rapidly filling up the car. I am not too sure how I am going to get Graeme and all of his gear in the car, let alone Andrew who is coming along as a volunteer for the weekend. It will be a cosy 3-4 hour ride to the camp site.
This is our 1/2 way to IronMan weekend where we get to test out some of our race day strategies in preparation for the main event in August. It will be a completely new experience for me. Although I have cycled and ran these distances before, I have never swam so far in one go. The course is also supposed to be one of the toughest around (Wildflower long course), and there is a possibility of rain- probably overnight, so camping will be fun! The action starts at 7 AM tomorrow morning when we jump off the dock into Lake San Antonio (http://www.lakesanantonio.net/). Depending on how tough the course is, I am hoping to get around it in 6-7 hours. DId I mention that we will be camping in the rain?