I’ll take a little break from my athletic bio and write a little about what has been going on. Many people ask me what races will I be doing this year and although I am trying to stay in shape it is really hard. My priorities are work (coaching you guys and girls), programming more things on the web site and spending time with my wife and kids. Training last year was hard to schedule but it was a priority since it was not going to be this year. I’ll try to go back to Kona once my kids are in school and I turn 50. There is no triathlon that can replace those great moments with the little ones. The fishing ponds here are no longer frozen so I took my son fishing and bough him his own fishing pole. We went once and nothing. Those fish are smart I told him. We went again and nothing. I think the fish are sleeping today I told him. We went a third time and as we were getting ready I told him that the fish were waking up. Camilo is only three and he is already got the fishing lingo. He is already asking me to change his lure and to move to another fishing spot. After about 30 minutes of no nibbles, Camilo got a little bored and decided to just leave his hook, lure and floater in the water. He wanted to go jump from rock to rock on the stream that brings water to the pond. I had to watch him with one eye as he is a dare devil and if he falls in the pond I am going to have to jump in and this water is frigid. Mom would not be happy. All of a sudden bingo! I got a fish Camilo! I shouted. He runs over to see this huge rainbow trout. This thing is so big I can barely bring it in with my line. We have no net so the only way to pull it out is by literally grabbing it. I did and as I did the line snapped. I was afraid the fish was going to back in the water so I carried the fish away from the water and placed it on the ground . Camilo just wanted to touch it. During the fight the fish went by Camilo’s hook and it got caught in it too. So we can say we both caught the fish. My son was very excited. “You caught a big fish daddy!” Yes we did. This thing weighed in at 4 pounds. We also hooked two more fish. One got away during the fight to bring it in. The other we pulled out but looked so small relative to our four pounder we put the fish back in the water. I told Camilo it was a baby fish so he was happy we put it back.
Since I am not racing and just coaching I have to fuel my racing habit via you guys. One thing that helps is the online coverage of some of these Ironman races. Some online coverages are better than others of course. I am not sure why but the online coverage for Ironman Australia was incredible. The organizers had live splits for all athletes. But not just a couple, they had about 6 splits on the bike and 6 splits on the run. One of our athletes that I had the pleasure of coaching with online training and extended coaching over the past years is Solveig Gysland. She is a wife and mother who lives in Oman but is from Norway. She is literally Norway’s most famous triathlete. She assures me that there are not that many triathletes in Norway. Right Solveig? Last year she was the top amateur at Ironman South Africa at age 43. But this year she decided to race in Ironman Australia where the field was a little tougher.
A few weeks from the race Solveig was not feeling good and she started to think too much and was virtually throwing the towel in. I told her not to hang the prisoner before the trial. She laughed. In any case she toed the line on race day and got out of the water in 8th place in her age group. That is not too bad as swimming is her weak sport. The online coverage had about 6 bike splits so I checked her against her W40-44 age group and she was moving up steadily. All good I thought. Solveig’s strength is the run so she just needs to get off the bike near the front. When she got off the bike she was in third place, the second place girl was just a minute or so in front but the first girl was about 11 minutes up. I was hoping that the first run split at 3.7 miles showed that Solveig was making a lot of time on the first girl. She only made up about 15 to 20 seconds per mile. I tried to do the math and if this stayed the same it was not going to be a win for her. This was fun but nerve wracking as a coach. So I decided to check on the girl on first place to see who she was. Well, Solveig had beaten her In Kona last year and out-split her on the run by 10 minutes. This was going to be close.
I kept on checking the splits and Solveig started to gain 20 to 30 seconds per mile. The pace slowed down quite a bit on some parts due to the hills. But I did not know where the hills were so these slower splits were causing worry as I was not sure if she was cracking or if it was the hills that slowed everyone down. Slowly and steadily Solveig got within a couple of minutes of the leader with 6 miles to go. I then decided to get on the trainer for an hour and spend some energy this way. But I took some breaks to check the splits. Solveig took the lead finally but it was close to the finish line. At that point I switched to the video coverage and waited to see if she was the first 40-44 woman across the line. She finish in 10:34:33.
You can watch her finishing here She set a new Ironman PR for her, won her age group 40-44 at age 44 which is very hard to do and was 6th woman amateur across the line. I will see her again in Kona this year.
The many timely and live splits given on the online coverage were great. Last week I was hoping to do the same for Ironman Arizona to find out they only had one split on the bike and on the run. That really stinks. Many of our team members rocked and Kelly Lear-Kaul from here in Colorado was the top amateur. Last year I rode with her over the continental divide and wrote a blog post on this great ride. It would have been a lot more fun to follow her and all of our participants a little tightly. Racing is really fun and for now this is my only fix.