Tag Archives: virginia

Backpacking, October '12

Itchy feet treated

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I just got back from another 100 mile adventure through the woods. When my professors cancelled my Monday classes, that opened up the door for me to turn what could have been a simple walk into an epic trek through southwest Virginia.

On Friday, my friends were going backpacking in Grayson highlands near the Tennessee-Virginia state line. I rode down with them but instead of travelling south with them into the familiar, beautiful Grayson Highlands, I decided to head north to cover some new Appalachian Trail territory. On Friday morning at 11 AM I turned north and with a simple “See ya broskies,” I was off walking. I had abandoned my rain gear, my tent, and all extra clothing. I exchanged waterproof, thick boots for running shoes. The physical goal was simple: go as far as possible in 72 hours.

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March '12, Triathlon

Live red

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I was nearly done with my long run when I heard the lyrics, “How will you know….if you don’t try?” whispering in my ears. It was the remix of Jetstream by Jacques Lu Cont. “How will you know if you don’t try. How will you know if you don’t try.”

I had promised myself I was going to take this one easy, stay in zone 1-2 like the plan says, not pop it up to zone 4/ threshold. But my legs were rolling underneath me and I never take these long runs easy. Every time I make that promise to myself, stay around 7′s per mile. Don’t push it. Just ease into it and cruise. I hit the halfway point at the absolute lowest point in Blacksburg and took a left turn into some agonizing cramps and uphill. The pace slowed but the effort rose. Before I knew it I was hammering it up the hill, trying to salvage the pace I had kept on the downhill.

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August '11, Triathlon

Luray Sprint 2011

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I absolutely love being short. People crack short jokes all the time. Hell there’s even a song about how I’ve got no reason to live. Don’t get me wrong, seriously, I love the jokes and the song, I’ll even dish it right back. But what people may not understand is that, while yes it limits the selection of girls I can date, I absolutely love my height. Being short is awesome.

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July '11, Triathlon

DNF

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Last weekend I won my sixth race in six races in Virginia. I made it six for six, no mistakes, perfect speed, absolute precision. Three of those I won by twelve seconds or less. The goal was to win, so I raced for the win, with confidence in my ability, no matter how close it was.

Today, for the first time ever, I received a bold DNF next to my name. I denied every hint of fatigue my body showed me. Rockett’s was my third triathlon in two weeks, having just completed Colonial Beach triathlon a mere 14 days earlier. I told myself, this time is different. I would win 3sports without digging deep into the well to be able to recover and race hard again the next weekend.

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July '11, Triathlon

Colonial Beach 2011

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In the days leading up to the race I had told my mom that having won four for four races in Virginia would make it hard to lose again. But then I recognized, maybe not. Maybe I would be satisfied with coming in second or even third in a race. Of course, the target remains the same, but sometimes maybe another guy just has a better day. I train for first, but maybe the other guy just had the upper hand that day.

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November '10

Breaking my resolution

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“I can’t just walk away. I’ve got to test the waters.”

My new years resolution for 2010 was to not doing anything stupid for a long, long time.

Yesterday I sent out a dozen texts to my triathlete friends around Richmond. “Hey man if you’re home for break, want to go swimming at Huguenot at 2:45?”

Three people were dumb enough to respond yes. At 1pm, one of them bails.

And at 2:45 another bails.

But my friend and teammate Alex Burton who I have been training with and racing against since I started doing triathlons shows up at Huguenot at 2:45.

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July '09

Beyond my limits

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Finally somewhere beyond Montpelier I decided to turn around. As if it were a gas station, I pulled into a stranger’s driveway to fill up my tank. I stuffed my face with twizzler’s and swapped out an empty water bottle. My legs felt fine and my mind was ready to take me a few more miles. But if hell had mountains, I’m sure they somewhat resemble the clouds sitting only a mile in the distance.

After squeezing two gatorades out of five dollars at a nearby gas station, I began on the thirty miles home. But while I was enjoying the sub maximal wattage I was putting out, the rain drops were getting bigger and more consistent. I thought to myself “I wonder if I can outrun this sucker?” I looked at my left hand which had heart rate zones written on it. I looked at my watch on my right hand and saw my heart rate was in the “recovery” zone. Yes I can.

The road would bear right and sprinkles of water would splatter on my arms and back. But as the road turned left and downhill, I picked up speed and rode out of the storm. I pounded on the pedals calculating my energy reserves perfectly to get me back home at this speed. I crested hills amidst corn fields out of the saddle, sat and felt the burn. It was my day and I could feel it. My legs felt rested and strong. The gloominess behind me seemed to be getting worse, and my legs stronger. The air felt light and chilly. I looked at my Garmin forerunner to see that I had been averaging 21.7 miles per hour.

I felt strong, I felt invincible. But the veins on my arms began to bulge, my legs lost their color, and I was feeling cold. Nearly a mile from my house my lungs felt weak and I felt winded. Once in my home I took only a few steps before I collapsed on my living room carpet.

Its been three days now that I have not trained trying to recover from that ride. I don’t think it’s really worth that.

June '09

Reaching beyond myself

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This past weekend I attended a training camp with Endorphin Fitness coached by Sally Fraser and Michael Harlow. Michael and I set off to Wintergreen, Virginia on Friday morning. After driving the next day’s bike course, we met the rest of the camp participants at a lake at the bottom of the mountain for an afternoon swim.

My first excitement was with a floating trampoline near the shore of the lake. I asked Michael “How many minutes did you have on my training plan for jumping on the trampoline today?” After entertaining myself for a few minutes I got to the real reason I came here and began swimming. The water was glass smooth and REALLY cold. And I got a wicked wetsuit hickey.

A post swim ten mile run took it out of me. The guys kept making me laugh when I was running. Michael’s shorts were falling down, I had wicked gas, and the guys seemed to make everything funny. Running and laughing is not a good combination for me. So it was either run with them, laugh, and get dropped, or set the pace and either make it so they cannot talk or they’re too far behind to hear them. Dropping the pace down to 6:40 pace killed their motivation to crack jokes.

All the ten mile runners gathered for a post run ice bath in the lake. I have never seen such a vast body of water so glass smooth. I poked my finger in the water and watched the ripples ride along the surface for several meters. For the first time in the day, the sun shone out of a corner of a cloud just over a mountaintop, providing me with a little warmth. I felt at absolute peace standing in this lake at the bottom of the mountain with no stranger in sight and the sun breaking the bleakness that had preceded.

This feeling was soon destroyed by my hatred for the law of gravity. The waterfall I had admired while driving the bike course the day before turned from being amazingly beautiful to amazingly aggravating. My admiration for the winding falls beside me quickly turned into a plain focus on reaching the top of a mountain during the long bike the next day. I would watch every drop of the water ahead of me and realize that was how much farther I had to climb. The water seemed to fall forever and I seemed to be climbing forever.

Up on the Blue Ridge Parkway the sun shone, the climbs were short, and the view seemed infinite. A massive group of touring cyclists aggravated the crap out of us for mile upon mile up on the highway. They made for good jokes and good confidence boosters. Towards the end of the loop we rode down wintergreen mountain. I reached a personal speed record on a bike at 58 mph.

Michael had told me I was supposed to cut off at fifty miles, one loop, and jump into the sag but that fifty soon turned to 3.5 hours turned to seventy-five miles. I was cool with that. My body wasn’t too happy with having run out of water and nutrition ten miles ago but seeing the sag truck for the first time in hours was a pleasant enough sight to dampen the pain in my legs and the aching in my stomach. I almost destroyed an entire pan of cookie brownie sparking questions later in the evening about how that night’s desert disappeared. Whoops.

The next day’s lineup consisted of a thirty mile mountainous fast ride ending with a three mile run up wintergreen mountain to finish the weekend off. I felt good so I hammered the bike with no regard for the other guys and the run to follow. Tyler, one of the guys at the camp had his revenge on the run. He caught me before the top after starting minutes behind me. Oh yeah and he had to run twice the distance as me. And he had run twenty miles on Friday when I had only run ten.

The slowest three miles for me for four years. After a quick clean up we headed home. A solid weekend of training to solid week of recovery before the Xterra off-road triathlon. Looking at my calendar for this coming week is kind of daunting. Eight races in two weeks. Two tri’s and six cycling races. We’ll see how it goes.