iSonrisas Para Guatemala!

Finals for the semester finished up this week with my last one being on Wednesday evening. After finishing up with that, I was up until 3:30am moving everything out of my apartment and into my car, then doing what I could of my cleaning check before crashing for the night. 6am hit and it was time to finish loading up the car and head to the Gerrard’s where they’re letting me stash it while I’m here in Guatemala for 10 days! Brad Gerrard took me to the airport on his way to work that morning and I’m almost thinking short nights like that are the way to go because the only part of the flights that I was ever awake for were the meals so almost next thing I know, we’ve landed in Guatemala City and after loading up the truck, we arrived at the hotel around 11pm and soon called it a night. We have a little over 20 dentists, a couple endodontists doing root canals, 4 oral surgeons doing the major extractions, and a bunch of volunteers to help out in areas of the clinic and humanitarian aid. In total our group numbers around 110 people and we’re scheduled to see nearly 1000 patients through the 6 days of clinic.

Friday morning we went to the church to set up the clinic and started seeing some patients around 11 and we continued on until about 8pm that night. Friday I was assigned to assist two different dentists as an assistant/translator and it has been a good experience to be able to get in the mouth with each doctor and also to be responsible for communication with the patient. It's awesome how once you get immersed in spanish, you eventually get back in the zone and it just starts flowing again. The first morning I was a bit rusty but things were a lot easier in the afternoon. We got back to the hotel and I went straight down to the pool and started swimming laps. I hit almost a mile in the pool before moving into the exercise room and getting 7 miles in on the treadmill before heading up to get ready for bed. I was a little worried about how this trip might affect my training in that I would be pretty busy and that there may not be the facilities to train or even that I could get sick while outside the country. So far they have taken excellent care of us and we’re staying in a really nice hotel with an amazing breakfast spread each morning, lunch is a make your own sandwich sort of deal, and dinner gets catered in to the clinic each night. While at the clinic, we actually have pretty decent facilities to use and at times you wouldn’t even know that you’re in Guatemala. Only on the bus ride from the hotel to the clinic and back, and on occasion when you see one of the two armed guards that circle the premises 24/7 do you remember that you’re in Guatemala.

Saturday we started seeing patients at 8am and I didn’t even get back to the hotel until 10:45 at night. It was a pretty long day as I had to take the afternoon doing my turn in sterilization for the oral surgery instruments which came through pretty much nonstop. The good part was that I got to practice the language with this 9 year old girl that was running clean trays back to the preparation room for us and so my spanish is rockin now cause she was talking with me nonstop the whole time.

In the morning and evening I did more of the assisting with patients and also spent some time taking radiographs in the diagnostics rotation. A lot of these kids are troopers as they travel from a different city and spend all day getting work done like usually 5 or 6 fillings, a root canal or two, then 3 or 4 extractions on top of all that, and maybe even a hygiene cleaning to top it off before traveling back home at the end of the day. I think the record so far was a kid that had 20 teeth with cavities to be filled and 6 teeth to be extracted.

For church today, we went out to a small town about an hour and a half from the city here, and after the service we did a “sub for santa” gift giving to all the members. We had quilts, baby bags, toys, balls, and even some candy that we distributed to them. One of the coolest things was that we also had a photo booth going where we took a picture for each family and printed/framed it right there so they could have one in their home. We then hopped on the busses back into the city for a devotional that had over 1000 youth and their leaders present. These are all the kids that live close by which we have seen/get to see over the next few days. I’ll try to update with more info and pictures as I have time during the trip.

Vegas Half Ironman!!!

I had a blast last weekend down at the Rage in the Sage half-ironman distance triathlon. Dad, Robby, and Sam drove down to Provo on Thursday and then first thing Friday morning we all took off to Vegas where we met up with Trey and Mary at the hotel casino where we were staying next to Lake Mead. After moving all our gear into the hotel room, we got back in the car to head out and drive the bike course. That was definitely a good move as the entire thing was just up and down hills with very limited flat stuff. While driving the course and analyzing it and my recent training (or lack thereof), I started dropping my expectations of what sort of time it would take me to do the bike. I had originally planned for 3 hours but with the hills and possibly wind, I got to the point where I was almost thinking I’d be closer to 3:20. After heading back to Las Vegas for race registration, we met grabbed some dinner, packed the transition bags for the morning, then went down to contribute our $20 to the casino before bed.
It took forever for me to fall asleep that night so 4am came extremely early. I debated hitting the midnight special $.99 bacon and egg breakfast, but opted to stick with my protein and waxy maize shake. We got down to the transition area shortly after it first opened and Trey, Sam, Robby, and I were all had race numbers close to each other because of our age so were all able to set up next to each other. After getting everything laid out and dressed into our wetsuits, we had time for a picture and then off to the starting line. We walked into the chilly 59 degree water right as they finished describing the course over the loud speaker and then a minute later they blew the horn and we were off. I felt like I was doing all right in the swim until I looked up at one point and noticed I was off course and had to turn back toward the group. I finally made the last buoy and next thing I know, I was up walking out of the water and checked my watch to see an ugly 40 min on there. I walked up the long asphalt boat ramp to my transition area finally unlatched my wetsuit in back after struggling with it the whole walk up. Mary was there as I walked in and let me know that Sam, Robby, and Trey had already come out of the water and were out on the bike course.
After getting ready for the bike, I took off with the goal of catching up to those guys and I knew Robby was wearing one of our red jerseys so I took the approach of just picking off every red jersey that I saw. With every red jersey I passed, I was starting to wonder whether I’d ever catch up to them. Finally as I was .5 miles from the turnaround, I saw Sam and Robby together as they were headed the other direction. This gave me a little extra boost as I was knew that I wasn’t getting left in the dust by them so I kept pushing up every hill. A few miles later, I come up a hill and see Trey up there standing on the side of the road taking a pee so we road together until we got up to same with about 10 miles left in the bike and Robby a few hundred yards ahead of us. Trey made a move and booked it up to Robby and they took it up the 3 mile long hill together before the long descent into transition where I came in a minute later and Sam just after that. I checked my watch coming in and was pretty pumped to see that my bike split was at 3:00:50 for an average of 18.6mph; much faster than I had anticipated while driving the course the day before. This was most likely due to having to catch up because of a slow swim.
We each wrapped up our transition about the same time and left out on the run together minus Sam who forgot his race belt and number so he went back real quick for them. Robby and I ran together for pretty much the first 5 miles of the course. We were pretty much dressed the same and stride for stride we kept the same pace so every single aid station and even other competitors kept asking us if we were twins. Apparently they didn’t notice the ages on our calves…or the fact that Robby’s legs are twice as big and buff as mine.
Around 5 miles in, Robby decided to drop back and run with Sam who was only 50 yards behind us so I just kept my same pace and hit every aid station along the way for a bite of banana, a gulp of heed, a gulp of water, and a refreshing splash with the rest of the cup. I felt pretty decent on the run and was able to keep my pace all the way to the finish. My run time was in 2:08 which came out at like 9:47/mile. My official time came in at 6:00:25 which was right in the range that I had been hoping for going in. I'm pretty happy with how the race went and my nutrition during it, and I think all of us are making good progress toward being ready for Ironman CDA!

Catching Up

So I pretty much got as lazy with keeping up on my blog as I did with my training between races, and I can’t say that all the snow in late March and early April can be fully to blame. I had a few adventures along the way, the most notable of which was probably when I left on a bike ride and found a nice brown deer antler up the hill in a vacant lot that I was riding past. Of course I was stoked so I ran up the hillside in my biking gear to snag it and decided to turn around and head back home. Finding this antler was actually bad for my training in my opinion because I then always wanted to go hiking to find more antlers. One of my runs was just jogging back to that spot and walking around a little to look for more easy ones and then running home. I also went up hiking a few times after classes and on the weekend and found a few brown elk antlers.
In my swimming class I posted a final time of 10:47 which I was pretty happy with cause I showed good improvement throughout the semester there. I was able to get an A in both swimming and jogging, and I figure that’s a good thing because I spent more time outside of class for those areas than I did for classes like biomechanics or history. Anyway, final projects and papers started coming due as well so I pulled an all-nighter as I was getting sick and neither of those is fun the week before a race.

LAKE HAVASU TRIATHLON RACE REPORT!!!

I finished my first ever triathlon this past weekend and it was a blast! We met at 7am on Friday morning to road trip down to Lake Havasu City, AZ and we made it just in time for the collegiate division pre-race meeting. The atmosphere of the collegiate division was a lot different than the overall competition because during the meeting nobody paid attention to the presentation because everybody was too busy sizing up the competition from the other schools. Our BYU team stood out among all the Arizona and New Mexico schools because they were already completely tanned and we were butt white (didn't help that we had all shaved our legs which made them look even whiter!). We stayed with some families that had offered to put us up for the night and we arrived at the venue at 5:30 in the morning to get our transition areas set up, get body marked, and prepare for the race. The swim start was a wading start where all of the collegiate males (~100 of us) were standing waist deep in the water lined up for the horn. Water temperatures were announced to be around 61 degrees but it wasn't bad at all. The race started and there was some crowding and a little battling for position in the water out to the first buoy turn, but I can't imagine what things will be like in Ironman with more than 20x the number of competitors all starting at the same time. My swim went about as I had expected. I was predicting a time between 28-30 min and was surprised to check my watch coming out of the water and see that I was at 27 min. My transition into the bike went pretty smooth as I was able to get out of my wetsuit pretty quickly, slam a gel, and spray sunscreen on my arms and face before heading out on the bike. Next time I need to make the extra effort to reach around and spray the back of my shoulders cause that was the only spot I got burned, but I got burned pretty good back there.
On the bike I only had my aero bottle filled with gatorade and after doing the first neighborhood sections with some hills, I realized that in the heat I had already polished most of my gatorade and was only 5 miles into my ride. I decided not to drink anymore until the last 5 miles of my ride when I was going to slam my other gel. That was probably a good call as I got a bit of side ache for next little leg of the ride but nothing bad. At the halfway turnaround they were handing out waters so I grabbed and dumped it in the aero drink leaving me with a really watered down gatorade, but in the heat, that's definitely better than nothing. We entered another neighborhood on the way back that had a few pretty steep hills in it. Coming back down out of it I maxed my speed at 46.4 mph to give you an idea of the grades we were riding. After hitting my gel at the 20 mile mark, I started riding pretty hard to try and get back in by my goal time of 1:15 on the bike. At this point in the ride though, the wind had picked up pretty good and so it was tough battling the strong head wind. I was able to pass more riders over the last 5 miles than I had in the previous 5 so that felt encouraging even though my bike time came in around 1:18 which was a few minutes off the pace that I had wanted.
My bike to run transition was really easy as all I had to do was drop off my bike, grab my race belt, and switch into my zoot running shoes. The first stretch of the race is on sand along the water's edge which just saps the energy out of you. After clearing the sand you run up a flight of stairs and across the London Bridge. I could definitely notice the rising temperatures while out on the run and at each aid station I had to grab a gatorade in one hand to drink and a water in the other just to dump on myself and my jersery to help cool me off. Took me almost two miles of running before my legs loosened up and didn't feel like I was going to have shin splints. After that I finally felt that I could hold a solid pace so I was able to ride that for most of the rest of the race until the last 5 mins when I hit the sand again and the way back to the finish. That was by far the toughest stretch of the race so coming around the last corner that put me back onto grass was almost more of a relief than crossing the finish line 100 yards away. My run time finished around 49 min which was a little higher than I had hoped, but I completed the race overall in 2:38:21 which was right in the range of 2:35:00-2:40:00 which I had predicted all week. As a team we finished 3rd overall in the men's collegiate losing only to University of Colorado and University of Arizona. We were pretty happy to be able to come in and place in only our first year as part of the mountian collegiate triathlon conference.
Swim-27 min; Bike-118min; Run-49min; Overall: 2 hours 38 min

1 week til Lake Havasu!!!

Down to a week until the first race of the season! I'm pretty pumped for this first race to see how the training has been coming. I guess if nothing else, I'll look good at the race. Our team warm-ups came in this week and they are way sweet. Our race jerseys and shorts are arriving early this week so we'll be representing the school in style and we'll hopefully have some representation on the podium. You gotta check out these sweet warm-ups though!
Good news from the swim department! I've been working on some of the stuff from last Saturday's swim clinic and I'm starting to see some of the improvements I had hoped for. Did a few unofficial 650s during the week for reference and I was another minute faster than my last official time. Hopefully I can stay focused and keep my stroke in the race.
The weather has been pretty good so I went out Thursday morning for a bike ride then Friday found me skipping class for a 9 hour hike in the hills searching for some shed horns off a big bull that dropped them since I saw him last Friday. I zigzagged all over the hillsides looking for his horns but couldn't come up with them. I did, however, find a few other old ones including this 6 point.
Saturday I woke up to some pretty sore legs and think I was still a little dehydrated from the previous day so I opted to wait until 1pm to ride. We did around 30 miles but hit some pretty steep hills hoping to be ready for the couple we'll face in Havasu. It was pretty tough tackling some of those climbs without the usual pop that was missing cause of my hike. After the bike ride, we transitioned into our 10k run which was some of the only running I did this week (besides the day that I rolled out of bed 10 minutes before swim class and had to just tie on my shoes and run to the pool at school...good news, I wasn't even late).
We have a good group of 20+ heading down to Lake Havasu on Friday morning so it should be a blast and you'll have to check back next week for my race report.
Week 10: S: 4 mi; B: 45 mi + spinning; R: 8 mi

Better late than never

I may be a little late in updating the blog here from last week, but I suppose it's better late than never. It felt really good to finally start running again this week after giving my blister time to heal. It probably ended up being for the better cause my knee was feeling good throughout the week while running as well. I had a couple good runs just over 6 miles which is how far I'll be going in Havasu, and I also got a longer one of about 10 miles in on Saturday. I went hiking on Friday and while going up some steep stuff my foot slipped and I fell straight on to my knee cap. Pretty sure the elk across the canyon hurting me yell and grunt, and if there were any cougars nearby, I'm pretty sure I scared them off too. It hurt and resulted in a bruise bigger than a silver dollar on my kneecap. It didn't hurt real bad walking around on it the next day so I continued on with my plans for my 10 mile run. I woke up Sunday though and could barely go up and down the stairs to my room cause it was so stiff and sore. It's already Tuesday and dang thing is still purple. Haven't put it back to the test running yet but it's pretty sad that my last two injuries preventing me from running didn't even occur from running. A stupid blister while walking home from school and a monster bruise from the non-contact sport of hiking. Oh well.
Saturday we opted out of our morning ride/run to have professional triathlete Heath Thurston who hosted a 2 hour swim clinic with us. He's usually one of the first swimmers out of the water in his races, and his signature move is finishing that last 20 or so yards with the butterfly so his wife can identify him coming out of the water. He helped us out a lot, and of course the margin for improvement is maybe a little greater for me than for some of the top guys on the team, but I really took a lot out of the clinic. He started us out first with sinking to the bottom of the pool and blowing our breath completely out and staying as long as possible so that we'd get it in our minds that we can stay under without any breath. Then he had us do a deadman's float, from there we started kicking with it, and then we started breathing as we did it longer distances. Eventually we started streamlining, then pulling and arm recovering. The premise of Heath's methods is to teach you to feel the water and your body positioning in it. From there, you don't have to fight the water, but can let the water do work for you. It was pretty amazing cause I actually felt for the first time like I was gliding in the water. I'm actually a little slower swimming with these little corrections, but I feel so much more efficient in the water and that will pay off in the long run. I'm gonna keep working with that form and hopefully I'll become faster and more fluid in the water.
Well with the swim clinic and a canceled spin class during the week, I didn't get any time in biking but I did get my highest mileage run week and an awesome swim clinic which has me excited to keep improving there. 2 weeks til Lake Havasu and I can't wait!
Week 9: S: 4 mi; B: 0 mi; R: 22 mi

Here kitty, kitty!

This week I didn't get a ton of running in because I was a bonehead and paid the price. Walking home from school about a week ago, one of my socks slipped down on my foot and I didn't feel like bending over to get it because I had a fairly heavy backpack that day. No big deal I though, I'll just get it when I get to my apartment. Arriving at my apartment I reached for my sock and saw that I had a small blister that formed. Stupid! I bandaged it up before the next day's run but that didn't help and the dang thing ended up getting bigger so I had to give it time to heal and ended up with some low mileage running again this week. I was still able to ride though and Tuesday our physics class was canceled meaning I got home from school 3 hours early so off on a bike ride I went. I went up Provo Canyon on what was about a 25 mile ride and there was a lot of road splatter from the wet shoulders of the road up there. Here's a shout-out for another great Christmas gift as these booties kept my feet completely dry and clean (even though they went from being black to blending in with my brown carpet). Also, I'm not one of those hardcore triathletes...I swear, it's just road splatter.
Okay, we can probably switch gears. I'm got more into my racing mentality this week as I decided my hair was getting too long and I needed to take a little of the top. I did just that...and a little more on Friday and boy do I feel fast. Walking to school that day I swear I shaved many seconds and possibly minutes off my usual time. I felt so fast that I decided I needed to go hiking since I wasn't running yet. For those of you who weren't aware, it's pretty easy for me to convince myself to go hiking. It was a great hike on Friday after class and I was able to locate about 19 bull elk and my biggest prize of the day was seeing a cougar up there too! I know this is a training blog but since I can classify hiking as cross training (and any of you who have been on one of hikes probably wouldn't argue), I reserve myself the right to post those pictures too.
I'm pretty sure that cutting my hair helped me to shed a few pounds, too. I weighed in yesterday and was down to like 165 which means I've lost 10 pounds now in my 2 months of training. That puts me on track to be down to the 155 that I'd like to race at for Vegas in April.
Time is counting down on the races as the Lake Havasu Olympic distance is slightly less than 3 weeks away and Vegas will be following a month after that!
Week 8 mileage: S: 5 mi; B: 53 mi + spinning; R: 5 mi;