- I am tired from storytelling.
A little hell-biscuit of a position.
So at the halfway point of that one mile.
Good morning, Trainiacs.
Let's just swim.
(r&b music)
It's 2800 in the bag.
Clipped my toenails yesterday, so
I was a little bit slower.
It's what you deal with being pretty.
So that little business, I pulled out of after
pretty much exactly one hour.
Still just want to ease on in to getting back into the swim.
Not kill myself in the first two swims back.
That's okay, not bad, no complaints, feel good, feel rested.
I don't feel fast, that's just the toenails.
(r&b music)
Seven minute abs.
I added that arms-over-head set.
Like, this one, this whole thing here.
That little hell-biscuit of a position.
(r&b music)
It was kind of funny, my buddy Trevor there.
You know Trevor, tall, long hair,
real stud-looking creature.
Just talking about the beginning of
the season duathlons.
Which I refer to as the annual lung-butter classic.
Which we both agreed, are the
most painful races that we've ever done.
Allow me to ride into the office and explain.
Even just thinking about those duathlons
makes my cheeks quiver.
Explain right there.
So every May in Manitoba, we have
what's called the Duathlon in the Park series.
There's a short course duathlon
which is a 2K run, a 20K bike,
and then a 2K run.
And then there's a long, which is a
4K run, a 40K bike, and then a 4K run.
And consistently, year after year, this is
the most painful race of the year.
To the point that I sometimes can't even fathom doing it.
This year, no, didn't do it.
So first off, duathlons themselves are crazy painful.
Because your heart rate is like, boom, running.
And then, instead of like, a swim,
where's it's fairly controlled,
and you can kind of get in a rhythm,
you are just, boom, going as fast as you can,
and then, in addition to that,
all of the high performance kids that are just twitchy fast
they go into these races too.
So their running legs against my old man legs,
and then by the time you get on the bike,
your heart rate is at like, max effort, 170 beats a minute.
And for a lot of people, it's the first time
that they've been outside on a bike,
with the wind in their nose, at race pace,
it's usually a little bit cold,
so you know when you're running,
or biking really hard in the cold,
and you get that little,
(clears throat)
like, that gross feeling,
like you've got to spit all the time,
that's why I call it the lung-butter classic.
Then when you get off the bike, bam.
You've gotta go into a short run.
So by nature, just the setup of this race is made for pain.
Getting into the most painful race I have ever done.
Two years ago, before the very first
Tuesday duathlon in the park, I decided
that I was going to be a good dude, and go and donate blood.
As I'm donating blood, I'm sitting there,
and I think to myself, is this smart?
And I Google, basically, is it smart
to go for a run after donating blood?
Hands down, every single website that I went to
said no, do not do it.
That is basically the physical exertion
of running a full marathon and it's gonna take you
a couple of weeks before you're ready.
And here I was, about to do a duathlon the next day.
Now being the stubborn guy that I am,
I wasn't going to let this get me down.
So I still go to the duathlon,
I go in the short course duathlon.
Which was supposed to be a 2K, a 20K, then a 2K.
The 2K ended up being about 200 meters short,
so it's an 1800 meter run,
basically a one mile max effort.
And who shows up but every single one of
the high performance kids in that same race.
The gun goes off, and all the running, high performance kids
that are track athletes in high school and junior high,
they go off at about a 330 per kilometer pace.
Not to be outdone, I figure, I can try to keep up.
Now, I can't quite keep that pace.
But I lose about 20 to 30 seconds on that path.
I tend to be fairly strong on the bike,
so I know that I'm going to be able to catch them.
I catch one guy, and I'm tied, or just passing him,
for third place, and we come into transition together.
He has a really quick transition,
again, because they're really twitchy fast.
And they practice quick transitions for short course.
He passes me in transition, and all of a sudden,
I have basically a one mile sprint to catch the dude.
Now the course, is an out and a back.
And the turnaround at the end of the loop
is at the top of a hill.
Now I know that I'm not going to be able
to catch him in the finishing shoot
because he's gonna have more legs than I am.
But I know that I'm maybe just a little more
physically strong.
So at the halfway point, as we're coming up the hill,
I go, this is my chance, this is where I've got to pass him.
So at the bottom of the hill, I hit
the afterburners, charge up that hill,
the people at the top of the hill telling people
that's the turnaround point, they literally stop,
and they're like, holy (drum bangs).
Yeah, I was going that fast.
And I'm running down that hill,
and I've got about five meters on this young fella.
And I'm thinking to myself, that's right.
I'm a bad mother (drum bangs).
Four seconds later, four seconds later.
The world closes in on me.
My line of vision just got like, this big,
and all of a sudden.
(wheezing)
And I've got 900 meters left.
And I can hear him, five meters in behind me.
And I can hear the guys he races with
passing him, going, "catch him, catch him!"
And I'm running for my life,
and at the finish line, I turn around
and I've opened up a gap of about 30 meters on him.
But who's in behind him, but a
high performance girl that is charging up
to the finish line right behind me,
at like, blistering pace.
So as I'm, no, no, no, no, just 50 more meters
to the finish line, oh my god, she's on me.
Get across the finish line about one meter ahead of her.
Of course, nobody was cheering for me,
everybody was cheering for her to catch me.
And that was the most painful race that I've ever done.
It was 41 minutes long.
And hands down, more painful than
the half-ironmans that I've done.
So when people give me flack because
I haven't done a full ironman and
they disrespect the short course stuff,
that people all around the world do,
short course stuff is painful.
That felt like a really good story.
I think I'm going to reward myself
with some overnight oats.
(r&b music)
Trainiacs, do you ever have one of those days
where you finish the day and you get home
and you're just like, yeah, nailed it.
That was today.
I was a big fan of this day, huge fan.
Alright, we're gonna call it there.
I am tired from storytelling.
Goons!