The KodaFit Blog

Before I begin…  I’ve made an amendment to my last post.  It seems as though my cycling shoes may be too loose, resulting in symptoms which made me think they were too tight. I’m off for a ride in a few minutes with tighter shoes, and hopefully less pain…

And now…  Last nights offering for you:

In a rather shocking and unexpected twist, the case of Pantz v Leggs met with a rather sudden conclusion last week.  I would have spoken out sooner, but as I am sure you will observe the drama associated with the ending of this saga needed some time to sink and flush itself out.

Allow me to introduce you to the players in this interaction…

Pantz is a pair of beige dress pants, which I believe where purchased by myself from Walmart about 2 years ago.  If memory serves correctly, they were actually on the clearance rack, most likely for reasons which I, being a man did not understand at the time.  My sweet Mrs however has since explained that apparently the multi-pleated front is a fashion faux-pax, and statement which due to several season of “What Not To Wear”, I feel that she is more than qualified to make.

Leggs are my own two legs.  Somewhat hair and oddly lumpy around the knees.  They have a small scar right below the left knee and what looks to be a rather faint birth mark on my inside left thigh.  Me and legs have been through a great deal together, from hikes along the African coast to mountain trails in a rain forest.  They’ve been on 5 of the world’s 7 continents and are still going strong.  They were unfortunately the first victims of my recent bout with insane endurance pursuits.  When I started, they were beset with a fair amount of ankle and lower leg pain, and following the conclusion of my first 5k race, I was to discover that chaffing in the upper and inner thigh region had resulted in a nasty and rather blood patch of pain which took over a week to heal.

It was last Thursday when things started to go awry.  Me and some friends from work decided to use our lunch break to go on a walking tour of some neighborhoods in the Avenues district of Salt Lake City.  Seeing as it was only a walk, I opted to forgo the addition of compression shorts to my attire, something which has been an integral part of my exercise routine since the aforementioned chaffing incident of 2007.

The walk was very pleasant.  The sun was shining for part of it, and we got to see some rather quaint and unique homes.  Midway through however, a rather chilly wind picked up and ominous clouds appeared off in the distance.  It was about the point that we began to retrace our steps back to the office, when the weather change happened.  10 minutes later, the dark spots began to appear on the pavement as the precipitation commenced.  We went from a walk to a quick walk, to a jog, to a run, or as best as one can run when wearing dress clothes.

Part way down into Memory Grove to traverse over to the State Capital, I began to feel some tenderness down below.  I was hopeful that with a little weightloss since the chaffing incident, as well as more miles spent running that my legs would be able to withstand the friction a little better.  Pantz on the other hand, seemed determined to protest the running and the weather, but rubbing harder.

You’ll be please to know that Leggs held out well, and while there was some tenderness at the time, it was nothing which lasted very long.  It was a gallant effort by Pantz, but in the end he just wasn’t tough enough.

The final blow came several hours later as I walked from my cubicle to my car.  At one point in that journey, as decision may be make between jumping up a small retaining wall and taking a short cut, or going around the wall via some stairs and a short walkway.  We’re probably talking a savings of about 20 feet with this shortcut, and maybe 10 seconds in time savings at the most.

I can run a marathon, and train upwards of 30 miles running and 100 miles biking a week, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to stretch myself and walk those extra 20 feet to get to my car.  And so I opted for the jump over the wall.

And that was when it happened…

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!

In a shocking and somewhat embarrassing conclusion, Leggs got one up on Pantz and literally ripped him a new one.  I was left with the remaining portion of my walk to the car torn between reaching down to see just how bad it was, and thus drawing attention to the fact that I was walking around in ripped pants, or simply walking as nonchalantly as possible and hoping no-one would notice.

Pantz has since been relegated to the trash, and earlier today made his way via government funded transport to the Davis County landfill.

Leggs are still going strong and spent lunchtime on the same roads as last week, but this time resting securely in a pair of compression shorts.

I do have pictures of the aftermath, but am hesitant in posting them since…  Well, let’s be honest here, I’m not exactly a 19 year old swimsuit model, and so I think the appeal of underwear shots of yours truly might be limited at best.

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I’ve mentioned the new toy I got for Christmas - a wee counter to wear when I swim.  I’m about to write a review on it, which I’m hoping to submit to EveryMan Tri, but I wanted to share a related story, which as you may gather from the title might not be necessarily appropriate for a larger audience!

So I went to the pool today.  It’s the day I telecommute for my job, and so if I leave here as soon as I can for lunch and fly over to the pool, I can usually get a little more than 30 minutes of good hard swimming in.

Today I was a little slow getting going, and so I left in a bit of a hurry.  Arrived at the pool a little late, and tried to sign in. They just got a new bar code system though, and so the cashier had to set up my account and assign a bar code for me…  My pass expires next Friday and I may be switching to another pool, so I was a little annoyed anyway, and running a couple of minutes late.

I usually wear my swimsuit under my clothes to save time at the pool.  Flew into the change rooms, got my clothes off, grabbed my goggles, towel and headed out to the pool.  Found a spot for my bag, pulled out my watch and my sport counter and headed over to find a line.  Found a line in the deep section, jumped in, adjusted my goggles, started my watch and the counter and set off.

The thing I like best about the counter is I don’t have to remember what lap I’m on.  If I’m only doing 200 yds at a time this isn’t a problem, but when you have to do 30+ laps, I often loose count.  With the counter I get to relax and focus on my form and style.  I get to think about stuff too.  Many a programming problem has been solved while I’m out running or biking, and now I can do it swimming.

It was about lap 3 that I was feeling nice and relaxed and it was at that exact moment that I realized…

I forgot to pack underwear…  Noooooooooooooo!

It was a great swim.  I got a mile in, averaged about 1 minute for each 50 yds and as a bonus the showers were warm.  That said however, I didn’t have underwear and I wasn’t about to wear a wet suit out into the frigid air.

Yes folks, I went commando.  In the words of Kramer…  I was out there, and looovin’ every minute of it!

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So I was surfing around on the internet last week, and I typed in “st george marathon race report” to google, and HOLY CRAP!!! my blog entry on the St George Marathon came up as #2 on the list.

That’s really cool, because sometimes it takes quite a bit to get that kind of search engine placement, but then at the same time, I would think anyone looking for information on the race for next year would likely read that, and there were a couple of references to my morning bathtime rituals and what-not, which most people probably don’t really want to read about.

So my plan from now on will be to give 2 race reports.  One more colloquial and fun, and then a second and likely more serious report that hopefully people who want to read about a specific race can get information on, without being subject to stuff that might rather not read.

This is the fun and more personal story of my last triathlon of the season last Saturday.  Lest I get too long-winded, I’ll try and give you the condensed version.  I have 5 kids and a wife.  With the exception of kid #5, everyone else in the family got the stomach flu last week.  It’s nice to get it out of the way before Thanksgiving and Christmas, but then again, cleaning up puke and poop is never fun.

I generally miss out on these little infections, because 1 - I work out a lot, and have been healthier since I started doing that and 2 - I work far too much, so I’m not around the family as much as they are around each other.  On Friday morning, it looked like most of them were over it and since I had the day off work, I spent it outside hanging up the Christmas lights.

I’ll post pictures when I finish it all up later this week.

Anyway, around 10am, I started feeling iffy.  I had been feeling iffy before but chalked it up to an overactive imagination.  At 10am, I was pretty certain it wasn’t.  I stopped eating, and started drinking water and the occasional shot of Pepto Bismol.  By 5pm I was feeling really crappy, and pretty nervous about the race the next morning.  I tend to be a little overly competitive, depite not being very fast, but the idea of a DNF or a DNS was not sitting well with me.  Actually nothing was sitting well with me anyway.

At 7pm I did my pre-race hair cutting ritual.  My hair has been getting a little too long, which I know because when I comb it in the mornings, I can tell it’s been combed.  Usually I cut it in the shower, to make the cleanup easier, and so I got everything setup, put the clippers over the shower door, grabbed the #1 comb and hopped in.  I then realized that for some reason the GFI breaker had tripped, so I hopped out, ran to the other bathroom, reset it and ran back.  I then commenced cutting my hair.  As I finished cutting the right side, I thought back to where I had slid the comb onto the clippers…  Oops, the comb was still sitting where I had put it down to run and reset the breaker, and my hair was about as close to being shaved clean as it could be.

I left a mohawk for a few minutes, just to show my wife that it could be worse, and then shaved it all off.  It actually doesn’t look too bad!  God made a few perfect heads, and the rest he covered with hair.  I’m guessing I lucked out and got a little of both!

I ended up having to stay up till around midnight and when I went to bed I was feeling even worse.  I was awakened at 4am, actually feeling a whole lot better as a whole, but with some effects of the flu still lingering.  At that point I decided I was doing the race.  I dosed up on a couple of medications - You probably don’t want to know what kind, but I’m dedicating my finish to Immodium AD - and got a couple more hours of sleep.

The race itself went well, or as well as it could have gone, given that I hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours, was pretty dehydrated, and had the flu.  I had been hoping for a time at or below the 1 hour mark, but it ended up being just a hair under 1:10.  I’ll post another report shortly with a description of the race and more details on my time and that kind of thing.

I still don’t have much hair on my head, my muscles are still really achy and I have yet to catch up on my sleep, but I am feeling better.

As a final and completely unrelated note… Thanksgiving is coming this week.  Last year I started growing a goatee right after thanksgiving and didn’t shave it off until my first race.  I think I’m going to make the winter facial hair a tradition.  The question this year has been goatee or full beard.  I posed that exact question to  a couple of friends during our lunchtime run yesterday.  Dave recommended the full beard - probably because that’s what he has.  He then added that I looked good in facial hair and that with a beard and a shaved head, I would look like a bad-ass motherf*cker.  Dave Rocks!  So stay tuned for details on the winter face, and perhaps some photo’s of me looking like a bad-ass motherf*cker!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

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For the past few years I’ve been trying to work on not being as judgmental of those around me.   More recently while competing in various triathlons and other endurance events, and even while training, I’ve had experiences that sometimes things don’t work out as planned, and that’s OK.  I’m just one member of the huge family that we like to call the human race, none of us better or worse than another, and all trying our best with the hand that life has dealt us.

With that said, I owe Chris McCormack a HUGE APOLOGY.  In a recent blog where I talked about the Kona Ironman, I mentioned my disappointment with him dropping out of the race.  I based my opinion on that based on what he had said shortly after he dropped out - forgetting that he was probably fairly stressed over the situation, in addition to completing a fairly sizable chunk of the course.

If you want the full story about the unfortunate events that caused him to drop out, you can read them on his blog, right here.

Chris, as little as it may mean coming from a back of the pack age grouper, whose sole participation in Kona was limited to lying on the floor watching it on TV, please accept my profound apologies for misjudging you.  Hopefully next year things will work out, and you, Craig and the other amazing competitors can truly do battle on the big island without unfortunate incidents like the one that befell you this year.  I will likely still be found watching it from the comfort of my home, but I’ll be cheering even louder.

I am also impressed with the amazingly dignified way in which Chris handled this unfortunate situation.  Training for something this big, being the defending champion, and then having to drop out because of something over which he had no control, nor which could have been prevented, he showed remarkable resilience.  I would no doubt have spent several hour shrouded in a dark cloud of misery and self loathing, had something even half as bad happened to me.

Chris is now not only an inspiration to me because of phenomenal athletic ability and dedication, but also an example of how to deal with defeat, when things just don’t turn out the way you expect, something which will be of far more importance that any amount of training motivation or race experience.

Thanks Chris, and again, please accept my humblest apologies for being a ‘mook’ about the whole thing.

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I’m still working on putting an actual site together in front of this blog.  One of the things I would like to include on that is a section on the awkward topics associated with running, triathlon and other sports.  Being fairly new to this arena, I have picked up some of these things, but still have quite a way to go.  Things like dealing with bowel movements on race day and chaffing nipples.

I was thinking about this a lot this morning as I put my shirt on…  2 night ago, I did 2.5 miles at the local high school track.  I started slow and ended fairly fast.  There was a cold front coming in, and after a very warm day, the cooling had started but it was rather muggy.  I was running in a cotton T-Shirt.  My nipples got tender around lap 9.  I probably should have taken my shirt off, but pride prevented me.  I’m wondering if the bandaids I wore on them during the marathon on Saturday softened them up.   Regardless, I have a continual reminder of my error,  every time my shirt scrapes across my chest.

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