2006 Dodge Ram Heavy Duty boasts towing capability of 16,400 lbs., a payload of 5,020 lbs. and Gross Combined Weight Rating (GCWR) and Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) of 23,000 lbs.and 12,200 lbs., respectively.
Taste: A little too sweet for me. A good non-staple alternative or “mix it up” meal, but not a good last meal.
Contents: Ramen noodles, and other good stuff.
Digestion: TBD
Overall: Not bad… Not bad at all… But too sweet.
I am trying to keep track of which Backpack food I like, and that I can digest well, for emergency purposes. I keep 2 gallons of water in the truck, and about 35 in my apartment, but I need food to eat as well. So here’s my quick and dirty review of Katmandu Curry:
Taste: Quite edible, but I’d have a hard time eating it night after night.
Contents: Lots of lentils.
Digestion: No problem, and easy on the stomach. I was not exercising or under stress though.
Overall: Definitely buy, but not a staple meal. Good for a change.
http://www.backpackerspantry.com/InventoryD.asp?loc=100&item_no=102309&category=test&subcategory=
I am at DIA getting ready to board a flight for Sacramento, and thinking about how dramatic the changes in airport passenger foot traffic are. When I walked off the tram there was no one in the concourse. I figured it would just be people reluctant to travel on sept 11, but now the concourse is packed..
Ok, well I thought it was interesting.
I have a ton of points, and haven’t taken a personal air trip in a while, except for a weekend in Cali, recently, so I used some points to upgrade to business class- this helps me get to the gate faster, because you get to go through a faster line for security. Anything that makes the trip to my seat faster is better.
I am also typing this out on my newish iPhone. I am still not sold on it though. I still love my old, reliable blackberry 8830. It does so many things so well that the iphone thinks it does well but really it does not.
Ironman Canada is in the books.
The Swim…
I nailed the swim. 1:40, which is 10 minutes faster than the 1:50 I was expecting. I’m pleased with that, for not having trained for the swim.
The bike…
The bike was another story. The two major hills were non-events. They were slow, steady grinds. What *WAS* an event were the rollers, and the wind… The wind was brutal. The bike took me about two hours longer than I expected it to. The big story was my gut.
One of the problems with ultra endurance athletics is processing food. You have to eat in order to go for 18 hours straight, and when your stomach shuts down for one reason or another you CAN’T go for 18 hours straight. Thus, we have a problem that wouldn’t be solved till the mid point on the run.
The second problem was hydration. Mid way through the bike I realized that the water bottle of water, with endurance tabs taken as well, wasn’t enough fluids. I went to the bathroom and my urine was dark yellow. A very, very bad sign. There is a saying at Ironman: “If you get dehydrated on the bike you will NOT be able to make up for that, hydrating on the run”. So I started to consume twice as many salt tabs, and twice as much fluids. I think by the end I was up to tripple the salt tabs, but once in the run my urine was clear, and that means I was fully hydrated. I had avoided a potentially very dangerous, and certainly race ending, condition.
The run…
Wow. Just… Wow. The only thing that we didn’t have on the run was snow. Well, we didn’t have any serious wind, either. The wind dies down here at night. It was a long, rainy, grind. The run is a one loop out-and-back, which psychologically works for me. The way out my Garmin 305 was working ok, even though it was filling with water from the rain, but at about the 9 mile mark it simply said “Low batteries” and quit. This was a huge blow to my race psychology.
There are two things I use the Garmin for. The first is tracking the distance. Even the distance between mile markers has me guessing, and the Garmin eases this anxiety. I also have it programmed so it beeps in a 4min:1min pattern, so I run for four minutes and walk for one. This allows me to run faster (and farther) on the 4, and allows my heart rate to recover during the walk. So now I didn’t have either of these tools. It’s raining, getting dark, and my feet have huge blisters on the bottom. Kind of demoralizing.
I got to the turnaround, 13.1 miles, got my “half way through the run” bag of supplies, and really dumped everything. I just didn’t feel like eating. Not to get too detailed, but my intestines didn’t start working again, after processing nothing on the bike, until just about the time my GPS shut down. But they DID start working again, and I did feel a lot better, but much more importantly, I was very hydrated through the entire run. Chicken soup (yes, they serve chicken soup in small cups), water, gatoraid… I got my Ironman hydration down. Now I just have to work on solid food!
The second half the run was a long walk punctuated by fartlich running. The bulk of it was done in near total darkness. I could see runners ahead of me because of their light sticks, and I never looked behind me. Actually, the light sticks were kind of funny- At one point an official truck pulls up beside the group of runners (walkers) I was with, and says “Ok, everyone gets one!” and started handing out these light tubes- They are light sticks but long and thin so you can bend them in a circle. The guy in the truck bend all of them into a circle, connected at the ends, and hands each of us a circle of light. I went to pull my “circle” over my head around my neck, but it wouldn’t fit, but it did sit nicely on my head! I thought “Hey, I’ve got a halo! This means I’m good, right!? And I look cool and different with my new, fancy, halo!” Then I realized everyone else had done the same thing, and that I only looked like everyone else- Ragged, sloppy, wet, and dorky.
“I’ll run to that light pole.” I said. I started running to one light pole, then walking to the next. This is called “fartlich” (I think that’s how it’s spelled) and it’s actually a pretty good technique for getting to the line. I was doing pretty good, feeling ok, and generally getting happy with myself and my pace when the guy in the truck showed up again (I had dropped the walkers I was with).
“Hey buddy, how ya feelin, eh?”
“Fine.” I replied.
“Ok, well, uh, so, you need to pick it up a little.”
“What? I should have plenty of time, and I’m going at a good pace…”
“Well, yea, you should make it with a few minutes to spare, but you can’t slow down, eh? You’ll make it, but don’t slow down. You’ve got seven miles to go and two hours. If you keep this pace you’ll make it, but if you slow down you are going to be in trouble.”
“I won’t slow down.”
“Excellent, eh!” (Did I mention everyone here is Canadain?)
At the finish, one of my oldest friends, Trenton Slade, crossed the line with me. We haven’t talked in maybe twenty years, after going to high school together, but I now remember how much our friendship meant, and he was amazing, waiting up until midnight with me in the pouring rain. A true friend.
Ironman Canada is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Harder than Death Ride, in California. But I finished, I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and I have to tell you I’m going to frame this finisher’s medal…
I’m here at Ironman Canada, getting ready to jump off, tomorrow at 7:00am. I have to admit, I’d like to have actually spent time blogging this experience, but I really don’t have internet connectivity here. I have to go to a cafe.
Ironman week, the week before the race, is frantic- I have had very little free time. In fact I still haven’t driven the bike course. That’s a really bad thing, actually, although once I leave here I am going to go shopping for dinner, drive the course (2 hours or so) and then it will be fresh in my mind tomorrow. Still a little frantic for my tastes, but one does what one has to…
All in all I think I’m ready. I have a fair bit of training, and while I’m not competing with the woman I just spoke to in a cafe, boasting of looking for an 11 hour time, I feel fairly comfortable that I’ll both make the cutoffs and finish.
I did a 50 minute half Ironman swim two weeks ago, I’m well rested, and I’ve just had a nice massage, so I think all in all I’m good to go for the swim. The bike is going to be brutal, and the run I will just have to grind through…
After the race I’ll try to write out a decent post on the experience.
Well, here I am trying to blog on an iPhone. To be honest I am impressed with the device but not the input method. Typing on my blackberry is much faster and much less frustrating.
Well, if I hate it in 14 days it’s going back.
Ok, so I haven’t been swimming much.
Well, I haven’t been swimming at all.
That changed, however, yesterday when I managed to get my rather ample ass down to Chatfield State Park for the Wednesday open water session in the “gravel pond”:
I always go to the 900m mark.
Yesterday I basically swam hard out to 900 meters, then came back, hard, with no rest. I’m pretty happy with the effort, I’m more than happy with how I felt in the water, and that’s a good sign that Ironman Canada won’t quite be the disaster I am thinking it might, especially with my altitude adaptation. But the 1800 meter lap I did yesterday is just a portion of the 3800m swim I’ll have to do for the race. The good news is that now I know for sure that it basically takes two laps out to 900meters to come close to the race swim.
Generally I swim to survive at races- I never really have any fear of NOT surviving, I’ve got a ton of experience in the water, and I’m a very strong swimmer, but I’m slow. One thing I’ve noticed, having not swum for a long time, is that I am much more aware of what’s going on with my body orientation, and how much water I’m actually letting slip under my arms. I think I needed a break from swimming in order to really get a better feel for the water. Between now and Canada I need to spend some serious time in the water getting my body orientation in the water the way I want it, and building my stroke back up.
What I really want is an endless pool, but there is absolutely nowhere to put one on my property. I’ve looked. I’ve racked my brain on where to put one of these babies but I just can’t find a location. Maybe in my back porch, if I expanded it out, but I don’t think I could get that past planning. Truth is my place is just too small. For now I’m actually going to have to leave my house and go to a pool to swim.
Ok, so originally when I put up my list of items that I need to get through this year #1 was to get the garage under control. Finally this was a project that had to get some traction. I was thoroughly disgusted by how my garage looked, and I needed to get my truck off the street.
Over the winter I had major problems with mice. I let them live in the garage failing to understand just how filthy they are. Once I did, however, I managed to get rid of them reasonably quickly, however they still left an insane mess. I had to clean everything in the garage, and throw a ton of stuff out.
Well, I managed to actually get the garage done. It took a monumental effort over several weeks, and I still have other work to do, organizing tools, getting a grip on my inventory of parts and stuff, but to be honest the heavy lifting is done. The rest- moving stuff around and making things more utilitarian is something I will do on a project-by-project basis.
For example- Another project I had to do, as part of the “trim” project, was to create something that would fill in a huge gap at the top of my gas fireplace downstairs. I worked on that (and in fact finished it) yesterday, and in the process organized a fair number of tools and parts in the garage. As I need particular items for a project I reorganize and get a grip on those particular items. Things take a little longer, but the “little chunks” method seems to be working quite well.
The fireplace “frame” was a huge issue for me- it has been on my mind for years, but I knew I would really have one shot to get it right. I knew I needed to avoid using wood, which meant all of the supplies I used had to be cement and/or metal.
What I ended up with was a piece of aluminium corner framing, about three inches on a side, bolted to the underside of the top of the brick fireplace. Bolted to the facing of that is a piece of cement board, cut to fit. Then I have three pieces of the same slate tile (gauged) that have been attached to the cement board using thinset. These three pieces of slate tile are above the original black frame of my fireplace. The finished result looks great. I’ll post a photo as soon as I get the area cleaned up.
The only thing I did that I didn’t like was use pop-rivets to attach the aluminium bracket to the underside of the top of the fireplace. The underside is actually sitting on a 1/4 inch piece of iron plate, and drilling through that was a total drag. If I had done this before the mantle had been built (I had it done custom) then I would have used screws, and set them through the iron plate. But I didn’t, so I had to find another way of attaching the bracket. The pop rivets are fine, but if I ever have to get the bracket off it’s going to be a total pain in the ass. Well, to be honest, this is nothing that a crowbar won’t fix.