Pants Off Racing

http://www.timeoutproductions.com/results/09/falmouth/FINDRES.txt

POR’s KERI HEHN is in Rome, Italy right now swimming for the US of A in the World Championships. I don’t really know what to say about that except its a big f-ing deal.

PRONK AMATO and EX-STEP COUSIN BINGER ran the San Francisco Marathon this weekend. PRONK qualified for Boston with a time of 3:04 and BINGER qualified as best ex-step cousin ever with a time of 4:38. It was totally worth the video.

BOB LEIN and KEVIN “Sprout” STEIGERWALD are running the Philadelphia Marathon November 22. This date marks the day BOB shows his running dominance over his son, BRYAN.

DAN PELNER signed up for Ironman Lake Placid next July.

JOHN AMATO, D.R. AMATO, and SPROUT signed up for the Columbus Half-Marathon on August 16th.

If there is anything we missed, please let us know. This is exciting.

Vineman Ironman 70.3 – July 19^th

Dan Pelner

Been about a month since the last race so I figured it was about time for another one. I’d be racing solo this time so don’t have any pictures. Got up to Santa Rosa a day early to check out the course and check in. Seemed like a pretty flat course which would be a nice change of pace. On the

way back to

my hotel from the expo a car exploded on the freeway, so rather then sit in traffic I pulled off at the nearest exit. As luck would have it there was a movie theater there, and I went and saw the best movie ever while the traffic cleared. Pretty sure if you swap that tiger for a cougar “The Hangover” describes most of our trips to Vegas. After the movie I met up with some folks from LA Tri Club for dinner.

Normally my age group is the first or second wave of the race, but for this race they randomly draw age groups out of a hat to determine the order of the waves. So my wave wasn’t until 7:30, which meant I could sleep a little later. Expect to see more races with this kind of system in the future. The swim was in a river, but there was almost no current, and the water temp was just cool enough to allow wetsuits. It was also pretty shallow, I even saw some people up and running at some points.

The bike course was a rolling ride through wine country with some great scenery. I thought I saw an Emu farm at one point on the course, what the hell do you do with an Emu farm? I was able to stay in my aero bars for most of the ride and felt pretty strong throughout. About 7 miles into the ride I came to a fallen tree in the road. Later I found out that the tree came down in the middle of the race injuring three riders (http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090719/ARTICLES/907199983 ). Freak accident. The only big hill on the course came at mile 45, it was a pretty long one but not as steep as the hill on the Wildflower course. Luckily it didn’t get too hot until the end of the bike.

All I remember about the run was that it was hot and hilly. There also may or may not have been some local selling goats along the course. I really just wanted water though. As I came into the finish chute they were blasting “I’m On a Boat” on the speakers…awesome. Ended up finishing in 5:14, my fastest half-iron yet! Great race,

definitely planning on doing this one again in the future.

Pronk came to town this week to finally get serious about training for this ironman we have in 2 months. I think it finally hit us that it is relatively soon. It was a good week of training, a lot different when you actually have someone next to you trying to do the same thing as you are.

Weigh In: 159

S – Run 8 (55:45), Ride 102 (4:38)

• The week started with an Amato family wedding in Chicago, always an interesting time when so many Amatos are in the same place. It was a lot of fun driving everyone around all weekend. On our way home, we stopped in ND for a nice trail run at St. Mary’s and a heavy lunch at CJ’s with Prof. Drevs. Once, we got to amish country Rohn and Kat dropped Pronk and I off so we could ride the rest of the way home. It ended up being 102 miles with plenty of wind in our favor.

M – Swim 3200m (1:15), Ride 22 (1:08), Run 7 (52:44), gym x 12, PU75, 960

• It was fun waking up at 4:20 in the morning time for our first swim of the week. Swimming in the dark is always my favorite. We pounded coffees the rest of the day, and then the rest of the week for that matter.

T – Ride 27 (1:33), Ride 24 (1:20), LSD ~ 13.5 (1:50), gym x 15, PU75, 960

• Pronk got to join Rohn and I on our weekly Long, Slow Distance run of the week at Oak Openings. Each week we run 10 more minutes and are up to 1:50 this week.

W – Swim 3200m (1:15), Speedwork: 6 Yasso 800s (2:52) – 4.75 miles (39:09), gym x 6, PU75, 960

• We tried out our first Yasso 800s workout today. Not fun at all, but I could definitely feel the effects of this track workout. Bart Yasso’s theory of this workout is to run 10 x 800 with a 400 jog between and average your 800’s time to simulate your marathon time.

TR – [Run 60 (~8), Ride 4:00 (81), Run 30 (~4)], 640

• Today was probably the most grueling workout i have ever done in my life. Thanks to Brandon del Campo, we tried one of his brick workouts he sent our way. We managed to finished it, and actually felt great on the last 30 minutes of the run. The bike was extremely long but it worked out great since Robbie joined us and we have a good line going the entire time.

F – Swim 3200m (1:15), Ride 16 (54:03)

• We couldn’t really get ourselves to do a whole lot today, especially after 3 days of early morning swim workouts followed by breakfast dates each day. I did test out Pronk’s new bike today, and its completely unfair. It is so light and quick that I finally realized why I was staring at Pronk’s ass all week while we were riding.

S – Run 18 (2:37)

• Pronk and I drove north to Ann Arbor for the day and ended up at Sterling Lake State Park. We didn’t really have anything specific planned until we arrived and they had a great 18 miles trail. Instead of riding today, we opted to run the trail instead. It was perfect though, a lot like oak openings with a lot more hills. Probably the breast part of the week was the 3 times I turned to look at Pat and he was doing ninja rolls in the dirt from tripping all over the place.

Summary: 25:42
Swim: 6 miles; 3:45
Bike: 272 miles; 13:30
Run: 63.25 (8:25)
Gym: x 33, PU225, 3520