Did you say beetroot juice or Bieber juice?

10:02 a.m.
On a Wednesday
Oak Park, IL

Last night The Triathlife attended a sport's nutrition clinic presented by Linda Samuels and hosted by the Salt Creek

Say "fitflop" five times fast.

Tri Club.

Sports nutritionist earn the bulk of their keep by providing critical analysis for optimal hydration & nutrition levels for both pro and age group athletes alike. They also have their ear to the ground with regard to cutting edge clinical studies and the latest trends in the food science world. Last night The Triathlife learned of the anti-oxidant properties of cherry concentrate and the nitrate wonder that is beetroot juice. All very informative as The Triathlife household willingly engages in alternative food consumption...especially when it comes to the more natural-ish performance and recovery solutions found in Mother Nature's cupboard.

Full disclosure....the one nugget that had me most intrigued was that when taken in quantity, and in it's pure form, beetroot juice would turn Schmitty's pee red. Yes, please!

Schmitty is still waiting for some university to sponsor a study on the recovery benefits of a 1lb bag of Twizzlers.

-HIM

Race Report: Cinco de Miler

	34m 16s 5.0 miles 06m 51s/Mi

6th out of 249 AG (M40-44)
98th out of 5058 OA

Cinco de Mayo! - And what better way to celebrate the spirit and heritage of our southern neighbor than to run five miles and drink Corona all before 10:30 on a Sunday morning.

I think this celebration is very quickly going the way of St. Paddy's day here in the states...

St Patrick's Day = people making merry all dressed in green, lots of 4-leaf clovers, leprechauns, pots of gold and a reason to drink lots of beer.

Cinco de Mayo = people making merry all dressed like Pancho Villa, lots of bandito-style mustaches, pinatas and a reason to drink lots of beer.

The United States of America - give us your tired, your poor, your finest brew.

On to our race report...

Schmitty (far left) wondering what bandito guy's deal is.

The Cinco de Miler! brought to us by RAM Racing (Running Away Multisport) or better known as the race
organizers who can't start any race on time. All joking aside, Sunday's race actually did have later than normal scheduled start time of 9:30am. Regardless, this Schmitty hit the floor running at 5:45 with all his personal pre-race business to be dealt plus getting Lance the wonder pup all fed and played out all prior to departing casa de Schmitty around 7:20am. I started the day with about 4ozcoffee and half bagel with pb. Then off to do some dynamic stretching and out for about a mile run to shake things loose.

Hey, there's Schmitty!

And what's a Schmitty race without at least one nutritional mishap....I left my Gatorade on the counter at home. So Schmitty started the race good and dehydrated with only a quick gel and a few ounces of water right before start. It was only 5 miles but sure as shootin' by mile 4 I was bone dry....even so, I opted not to take water on course and just dealt with the suffering until the end. Pretty happy with the result...until the last three weeks I haven't done any speed work since the early fall of 2011. So I am just getting back to ever so slightly increasing where I red-line.

Overall a fine morning to be out on the Chicago lakefront.

Here's a mile by mile breakdown if you're curious:
Mile 1: 6:50
Mile 2: 6:53
Mile 3: 6:45
Mile 4: 6:48
Mile 5: 7:00

Final :34:16


Hello again, Peabody and Sherman here....

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for "fifth of May") is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated in the United States^[1] and regionally in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla,^{[note 1][2][3][4]} where the holiday is called El Día de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla).^[5][6][7] It originated with Mexican-American communities in the American West as a way to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War,^[8][9] and today the date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.^[10] In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín.^[3][11] Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is celebrated on September 16.^[3][12]

And now you know. 

- HIM

What Rocky III can teach us about group rides

To ride with the club or to not ride with the club. That is the question often debated in The Triathlife household.

This past weekend we set out to ride with the Salt Creek Tri Club and the first time since October that Schmitty's tires were in contact with the road. And it showed. No amount of riding on the bike trainer can prepare you for the elements not to mention stops, starts and surges of riding in a group (on the flip side of the coin, no amount of outdoor riding can make up for all the missed episodes of "Justified" and "Parks and Recreation" - so there).

The original route called for us to do some hill work (or what we Chicago call hill work). I really wanted to measure my fitness after the long winter of riding indoors but Schmitty didn't make it to the first set of climbs....the group simply burned me off the back. Regardless, the parameters of my workout slated me to turn back for home anyway to keep my saddle time to three hours (it takes Schmitty a half-hour to pedal to the group ride departure point...adding an hour to any of my group rides). 

It's been a while since I rode with the club or on a dedicated group ride. I spent so much of last year riding on my own during Ironman training. Sure I'd meet a group of people for a ride (like meeting to ride the course up in Madison) but those were coordinated rides and not true group rides. Riding with a club or in a pack is a totally different beast. Riding with (or in my case behind) stronger cyclists pushes you out of your comfort zone. You need to dig deep to stay on the wheel in front of you or risk falling off the back having to play catch up at stop lights.

And this is the debate that Jen and I have over and over. Jen dislikes club rides because of the pressure to keep up with the pack...that the pack may push you out of your comfort and workout zones. There is also that understandably self-defeating and self-conscious feeling you experience thinking that people are waiting on you. Riding with groups can be daunting and intimidating because of this.

However, If you can set your mind, there are big time rewards to be gained by sticking with it....you will get stronger...you will get faster. Trust me. I mean, did you see Rocky III? Did Rocky beat Apollo on the beach run the first time? No he did not! But with hard work, a kick-ass music montage and bangin' knee-high tube socks, Rocky finally beat Apollo. A stirring example of the triumph of the human spirit (and probably some steroids).