Tussey Mountainback 50 Miler Race Report

"If it's going to happen, I have to earn it."
-my thoughts on DNFing

In the middle of June, during a wine night with some good friends and my running partners, my friend Sonja (fresh off an ultramarathon high, having just completed - and placed- at the North Face 50K) suggested that we all do a race together. There was one particular race that was close to her home in central Pennsylvania near Tussey Mountain and hey, it wasn't until October! What? It's during my birthday weekend, too? Sign me up.

Coming to the intertubes near you...

It's been a little crazy my way over the last couple weeks, sorry for the lack of more stories.

Up and coming:
-Trevor and Debbie bust a bicycle theft ring
-Trevor goes a car window
-T-Bone gets t-boned
-It's ultra season
-By early Oct: Will Trevor's milk mustache be hovering over a smile or frown?

What do you want to hear about? Let's make some adventures and tell the world what kind of dumb/awesome thing we did :)

Got Milk?

More specifically, chocolate milk.

mmmm.....

Let me tell you two two major reasons I care:

First, if you train with me, live with me, eat with me, or are even loosely familiar with me, then you know I effing love chocolate milk.

Chocolate milk, over the last couple years, has been touted as one of the most effective recovery drinks to follow a workout when you compare it to other recovery drinks. And I agree. Without getting into the weeds, here are a couple reasons* why it's a great recovery drink:

  

1) 3:1 carbohydrate to protein (in both casein and whey form) ratio (around 30g:11g) - optimal for muscle recovery

2) Packed with electrolytes (lots-o-potassium!) and Omega-3s 

3) Economical (less than $0.50 per serving, compared to other recovery drinks that are $1.00-$3.00 pre-made, or recovery drinks like Endurox, etc which, even in bulk, can be about $1.50 a serving).

*list not inclusive

And it friggin' tastes awesome.

The second reason I care is because chocolate milk may lead me to sponsorship for my athletic related activities. Yes. Milk - it does a wallet good.

Recently, I was selected as a finalist for Team REFUEL Sponsorship and it's going to take a little extra help from my friends to get me to the end.

What I need help with (and I'm sorry if this sounds silly) getting votes so that I can get selected.

There are two benefits of you voting:
1) Every vote earns $1.00 for Challenged Athletes
2) It helps my chances of winning

What do I get out of this? A little cash to help me buy more chocolate milk, some training gear, and a chance to race in either Scotland or Spain.

What do you get out of this? Love, kittens, eternal gratitude, and chocolate milk if I win. You also just helped raise money for athletes with disabilities!!!

How do you do it?

1) Go to: http://gotchocolatemilk.com/applicant/trevor-albert and click on me to vote when September voting opens (today, Wednesday 5 September at 5:00pm EST)

2) VOTE EVERY DAY <--also a clicky :-)

3) Have your friends, family, strangers, hobo's outside your office with iPhones, senators, PMs, mistresses, etc vote for me!

4) See #2

5) you may have to do a search for my name. Easy enough?

Don't worry about registering for anything, just click. No cost to do it.

Hopefully one day I can be as fast as Miranda Carfrae and get a cool commercial like her.

You all, as my friends and readers, are my biggest supporters. You make me train. You keep me encouraged. And I only hope that I can give back the same to you.

Thanks for stopping by, and please, vote every day for me through September. I'll let you know if our campaign has worked!

What's your AFTER? Leave a comment and tell me what you drink or eat after a workout!

Ironman U.S. Championship Race Report - New York City

"I want to wake up in that city 
That doesn't sleep 
And find I'm king of the hill 
Top of the heap" 

I thought this race report was going to start with something along the lines of heading off to Madison, WI or Louisville, KY. I even toyed with the idea of flying up to for IM Canada! Which Ironman race I’d be doing in 2012, my FIRST Ironman, was an absolute mystery. Why did they all have to be so far away?! In May of 2011 it was announced that a new race would take place here on the East Coast in the Big Apple. Ironman U.S. Championship in New York City! Or, more affectionately known as IM “New Jersey” since the greater part of the race takes place on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River.

Most of the tabs on the race web page were mere placeholders until more information was available. Okay... what do we know about the race? Takes place on 11 August 2012. And it’s almost $900. Hmm. Being Captain Decisive, I tabled the idea for a day or so to think about dropping some serious cash on this. After a little thinking, it was decided, and with luck, I was one of the many who squeezed in during the 11 minute window it was actually open for general registration.

In the early spring season, I had a few good races and some close friends of mine recommended that I start thinking about getting a coach to help me. For anyone who knows me, I’ve always just made up my training willy-nilly and hope for the best. While I’ve had success using that method, it seemed like it would be a pretty smart choice to bring on someone who knew much more about an Ironman and how to train for it. I certainly didn’t know where to start other than to just go out in train for it by volume.

Four months of solid preparation (save, a few weeks off for a revisit from an injury earlier this year) might seem to some as too much training, especially when the hours varied from 12-20 hours. To me, it almost didn’t seem like nearly enough. Back in June of 2011 when I signed up for the race I told my friend Tuan how excited I was to have gotten into the sold out race and he gave me one very wise piece of advice which I really didn’t pay much attention to at the time: Budget for food. Lots of it. I’d soon come to realise just how true Tuan was that once it came time to get down to real training business that I’d have to seriously budget for a staggering food bill every week. I was eating more and more every day and felt completely unsatiated after each more, craving snacks, extra helpings, and even supplemental meals throughout the day. I was burning through more and more calories and more and more cash with each week that came closer to the race itself. Wow! I need to write to Chipotle to sponsor my after training meals, and to Harris Teeter and Wawa to help me with the 2-3 gallons of chocolate (and some white) milk I drank every week. My survival depended on several cases of Honey Stinger waffles and gels every other day, and almost entirely every Saturday on my long rides. I was sick of the pool. Sick of running. Sick of biking. Sick of waiting.

Before I knew it, the realization that I was doing an IM started to sink in when someone asked me when the race was and I answered without thinking first, "oh hey, it's next weekend.... oh shit..."

Having arrived a few days early, I had some downtime and spent it relaxing and keeping trying stressing out. Well, trying to, until I got an email alerting me of recent developments in a massive sewage spill upriver. Oh, and then there were 70% chances of rain and thunderstorms. It literally came down to 4:30 Friday afternoon before we got official confirmation that the swim portion of the race would even be held. Whew. I didn't want to have to make my own "138.2" sticker. It was on.

Racking my bike was scary. The skies didn't look friendly at all.

The storm before the quiet?

Ferries taking us to Ross docks for bike racking.

A downpour greeted us at transition and gave a cold introduction to Ross Docks. Amazingly, the sun popped out within minutes of putting my bike to bed and gave me a slight sunburn as I waited for the return ferry. The rest of the day was fairly low key, dinner with friends and a few hours of wondering if everything was in the right place. You reach a point where you just stop caring and just go with it. To bed.

Morning
My first alarm went off at 0256. I’m hating life at this point. Get up, Trevor! I wasn't going to hit the snooze button. Not even once, no matter how much I wanted to. There were three more alarms set in case that one didn’t get me up, as I’ve slept through a few before. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much to do before I was out the door. I slipped into my race kit, made my peanut butter and banana sandwich and coffee for breakfast, and headed out the door by 0318. In the lobby was a gaggle of people gently scurrying about to be sure they made it in time to the shuttle that departed from the host hotel. We were all zombies loading into the bus that would convey us across Manhattan to the Docks where our ferry to transition waited. I was a bit surprised, yet not surprised, how alive New York City was at quarter to four in the morning. New York is a living beast, only slowing down for a few hours between dusk and dawn, but never coming to a stop.

2012 Kings Mountain Marathon - Racing in the southern hills

Misty sunrise in my hometown
Rows of cotton 'bout knee high
Mrs. Baker down the dirt road
Still got clothes out on the line

Over a beer with Jefferson and Jared it was decided that running Kings Mountain Marathon was a terrific idea. Why this decision was made still escapes me… This seems to happen to me a lot, and I never learn. There are worse choices to make, right? At least that’s what I tell myself.

Through the winter Jared helped our friend Jefferson, the race director for Kings Mountain Marathon, do some advertising for the race. They carefully crafted a challenge for participants to try and beat Jared as he attempted his first marathon at Kings Mountain, and by the middle of January it was written in stone and live on the interwebs. Speaking quite honestly, I had agreed early on that I'd race, but hardly expected the whim to come to fruition. I secretly hoped for injury or something to come up to preclude me from racing that weekend, but nothing came. Dammit. On the first day of February I conceded defeat and told Jefferson that I would in fact come down to Clover, South Carolina and race.

Rumpus in the Bumpass International Tri - 2012

First race of the season. And… go!

In the months preceding Rumpus I was thinking, “Yeah, I’m going to start training so early and be so ready!” 

Yeah, not so much. 

With a nagging hip flexor and some IT band issues, I definitely didn’t do as much preparation as I wanted. Instead, my idea was working on plain fitness and technique. During the weeks leading up to game day I did a lot of trail running (serendipitously – I’ll get to this later) and some open water swimming down at Lake Anna to help reacquaint myself with the water. Beyond that and commuting to work on my bike, I barely got out. Alas, it was time to try out all the new upgrades to Valeria:

bike pr0n.

Coming off a pretty good end to my 2011 season, I wasn’t sure what my goals would be. Would Rumpus be more of a practice triathlon to see where my baseline is? Hmm. Really, I just wanted to have a fluid race, just keep up with the pack, and not screw up any of my transitions. This was also my first race with the High Cloud Foundation. The sheer excitement among the Dream Team as race day drew closer was off the charts. Although fellow teammate Alex Nickodem and I were the only High Clouders racing the International distance race, we were still well supported by the rest of the Foundation.

The drive down Friday night was uneventful at best and was elongated by the usual Friday evening rush hour traffic, but I was fortunate to have a friend from DC Triathlon club, Adam Stolzberg, to keep me entertained. We met up with some other DC Tri guys, Ryan Troll and Ben Winterroth, at a restaurant for a pre-race meal of pasta, bread, and maybe some more pasta! Wait... where are the carbs? There was no pasta to be found in the entire establishment. A sweet potato and some biscuits were about as close as we could get. After a disappointing meal we stop by a grocery store before arriving at Russ’s house for a good night of sleep.

This is where things got interesting (no, not like beer and pillow fights).

Blue Talon Bistro 5K

A year ago I ran couple 5Ks with some level of effort and did well, with only one notable Age Group finish with a satisfactory finish time. My strength has never really been in the short course, so I don’t typically do much speed work throughout the year, and focus more on longer miles. Earlier this month I ran a 5K after just starting a program of track workouts and specific training for a shorter, faster race with my coach. While PRing by a few seconds, but still finishing with a strong time, my coach and I felt like I could do... well.. better. Time for the annual Blue Talon Bistro 5K in Williamsburg, Va. Jared put me through a gauntlet of focused workouts to maximise my strengths and condition me for a better race on Thanksgiving. Most of all, he told me to have fun, and enjoy the race.

The Blue Talon Bistro 5K in my hometown of Williamsburg is becoming one of my favourite holiday races. It supports Meals on Wheels, tours through Colonial Williamsburg and the campus of my Alma Mater (The College of William and Mary), but most of all, it’s extremely easy to get to. Last year I raced this for the first time just before my marathon, finishing top 30 out of about 1500 runners, which included the likes of Williamsburg hometown hero Ed Moran (with a 14:44 finish if I remember correctly). This race, despite being a turkey trot, draws some of the fastest people around. 

Why am I with all the fast kids?

The weather gods smiled on us on race day with a sunny morning and moderate temperatures in the morning, floating around the mid 50s. Perfect race weather. My dad accompanied me to the race site just a few minutes from the house and is my walking gear truck, as mom is at home finishing the wonderful turkey meal she makes every year. It’s a little brisk, and my warmup goes smoothly, even running into an old friend of mine from the College, who graduated a few years beforehand. Doffing my warmups I moved along with the crowd, which had grown to over 2300 racers, to the start at Confusion Corner where Duke of Glaucester (DoG) Street begins.