You swam where?!

The schuylkill river! That's right. Competitors had to watch for toxic levels in the water rather than temperature. About a month ago a dead body was pulled out and this is a pretty frequent occurrence. A friend of mine from college used to row on the schuylkill for his high school crew team. One time his boat ran into a log that after they pulled this "log" to shore they discovered that no it wasn't a log. They ended up pulling a dead body to shore!

So not only did a few friends and me swim through toxic, decaying body filled river, I ended up doing this twice 2 days in a row.

On Saturday, my competitive nature kicked in after finding out that I was 1 minute 14 seconds from landing on the podium for my age group in the sprint triathlon. If I knew he was that close, I would have been sprinting my ass off to get by him. I later figured out that I would have a rematch on Sunday in the Olympic triathlon and after obsessing all Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and Sunday morning, in the words of Barney Stenson "it was oooon"!

Coming into the second transition, I saw his bike on the rack already and he must have still had atleast 6-8 minutes on me. I ended up beating him by 1 minute exactly on the Olympic triathlon. He ended up receiving a 2 minute penalty for an illegal pass which then jumped my lead to 3 minutes and putting me on the podium in second place overall for the combo event.

It's nice that I apparently only get penalties called against me in soccer which for anyone that has seen/played indoor with me realize that's a pretty frequent occurrence. This is probably because the only contact in this sport is in the water which no fear I made sure I was in the thick of things.

On Saturday I received a swift breast stroke karate kid style kick to the face square on my left goggle. On Sunday I think for the entire swim portion of the race, two other guys and me were on top of each other, stroke for stroke pretty much hitting each other the entire way. I just figured this is perfect training for ironman lake placid.

I will have funnier posts coming but for now congrats to everyone for finishing and PRs at the triathlons this weekend in Philly! And thank you so very much for all of the supporters and my brother for letting me borrow his awesome bike!

26 days, 23 hours, 14 minutes until lake placid

Oreo what Oreo

So last year when I was living with my brother in Philadelphia, I discovered that I had the ability to polish off a ream of Oreos in a matter of a couple of minutes with a tall glass of milk. I later added to this with my incredible ability to demolish a "Minute to Win It Challenge" where you would place an Oreo on your forehead and move it to your mouth using only your face muscles. At a Thanksgiving field day event with some friends I discovered I could do about 8 in a row (including eating them as they got to my mouth). As many people know I have a sugar problem where I basically only want to eat sugar ALL the time, but what no one has realized is I actually have avoided buying Oreos since sometime in March.

Today during my 20 mile run (2:50:47 with 1138 feet climb) I was thinking about how with less than 5 weeks to go I need to eat healthier as I still have a soda every now and again (almost 1/day), and my awesome Nesquik dessert every now and again or endless other things... (Roommates you shush haha)

I actually thought for a minute I was doing well yesterday but then realized that I was not despite my ability to eat 2/3 of a chicken for dinner a brownie and then have a long swim workout.

"Ryan, I think you're the only person that eats the way you do and is training for an ironman" - friend from work

32 days, 6 hours, 34 minutes

First Post

So as I was swimming today, I realized that I have a lot on my mind about the Ironman I'm training for at Lake Placid. Tonight I'm just posting to say hello, but this blog will mostly be for triathlon and Ironman training, and to help me keep my mind clear about the race. I'll probably continue this blog for a little bit after the Ironman for a few other events. For now I'll leave whoever is out there with the following... Ironman Lake Placid aka "my first attempt at Ironman" is 33 days, 3 hours, 37 minutes away and counting...