The bank is closed

Okay, folks, that's it. I leave the day after tomorrow, and I'm as ready as I'm going to be.

My fabulously talented bicycle mechanic, Curtis Henry, has helped me pack my bike for the flight. I'm going to swim tomorrow, but I'm not running again until I set foot in Hawaii, and then only enough to keep me peaked. There's no more I can put 'in the bank' to withdraw on race day.

So how far have I managed to swim, bike and run since starting the blog? This far:



2295 miles

276 hours and 44 minutes

A long way, and a long time

Now, there's just 140.6 miles to go, and 17 hours to get there

Back in the saddle

I'm training again. In fact, I had my biggest week ever in terms of time. In the past week, despite taking two rest days, I put in seventeen and a half hours swimming, biking and running. This included a hundred mile bike ride (called a century), and an eighteen mile run.

My volume is back up, but I definitely lost some endurance with the time off. That run should have been my second twenty mile run, and the century should have been a week ago. With Kona four weeks from Saturday, these differences matter.

I'm right on the bubble in terms of successfully completing the course under the cutoffs, but I really, really appreciate the chance to try.

Local color

Yes, I am officially going nutty without training (the artery needs a few more days to heal), so here's a random thought:

The graffiti in my neighborhood is freakin awesome. For those not in the know, Jen and I live in a neighborhood that a realtor might call 'emerging', and everyone else might tactfully call 'colorful'. I either live halfway between Grant Park and the drive-in, or halfway between the DOD gunnery range and the federal prison, depending on how you want to color it.

It's safe, young and fun, but it definitely has some graffiti around. The graffiti would bother me, except that it's both creative and confusing. Here are my three favorites.

1. There's a tagger in my neighborhood who tags new houses and dumpsters outside remodels. He always paints the same thing, a pig with dollar signs for eyes. A political statement, done with grace and art. I have to give credit to this creative act of civil disobedience.

2. For the past few weeks, someone has been writing this in big letters on a couple of overpasses and open walls, "Get money. Be money." Affirmations for the artist? A statement about greed? A ritual to make it happen? Who knows.

3. My absolute favorite is eastbound on Decatur Street, just west of Son's Place (Yum). It just got painted over so it's harder to read, but someone painted the following on the Marta train supports. It was in huge letters, spread over two of them.

"Beware the chickenhawk motherf*er"
"Messing with the space time continuum bulls*t"

I think it's good advice for everyone, and I hope the author manages to keep escaping the chickenhawk long enough to explain more to us.

August training volume

How about some actual training? The amount is lower because of all of the dental fun, the purple, and the last week of August, where every day's workout consisted of 'don't exercise, don't bleed out'. Still, I managed to get some real quality training in. Almost every mile of the bike was either up in the gaps or repeats climbing Kennesaw Mountain, and most of the running was off of the bike.

Swim 11.53 miles (7h 53m 46s)
Bike 222.83 miles (21h 53m 22s)
Run 81.51 miles (18h 37m 43s) (plus 13 minutes of stress testing on the "Bruce" protocol)

I meet with Matt tomorrow morning to readjust the final few weeks of training based on the latest limits (no more high heart rate training at all). I start to workout again Wednesday (light), and Thursday for real.