Man, being sick is pretty lame. I spent the last weekend horizontal after some sort of illness kept from doing little more than sleep. Oddly enough, I still got in a 10k race on Saturday morning. I woke up feeling like absolute s**t, but I was hoping it was just a fluke. The race didn't begin until 10:00 in the morning so I was hoping I would come around in the hours leading up to the start. I didn't, but I went down there anyways. I decided I would warm up and if I felt alright, I'd roll. Again, I didn't, but I started anyways. Within one mile my heart rate went into the 190s and I realized I was in for a loooooooooooong 6.2 miles. That was honestly the highest level of discomfort I'd ever had to deal with in a race. Seriously. HARDEST RACE EVER. It was also the slowest 10k I have ever run (standalone).

I'm one of the more conservative individuals when it comes to balancing health and fitness. IOW, I often back out of situations and/or workouts if things don't feel right. I guess I was overly anxious to know whether I could tolerate the discomfort of racing after four months of none of it. Well, I guess I can, but I still should have been sleeping in my bed on Saturday morning instead of running that race like a yahoo.

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You guys need to check out Blakes's blog on www.blakebecker.com if you aren't already. He's got a really detailed outline of his Ironman Arizona training in there. I know we all like to get a little geeked out from time to time with that sort of stuff so that can be a great fix us all. He's really laying it down in the Land of the Mont.

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Speaking of blogs; my coach, Joe Friel, has a blog up and runnng at http://www2.trainingbible.com/joesblog/blog.html

He talks about some plyometrics I did during the month of February. Essentially it involves box jumps and 20 sec hill sprints on a treadmill. I didn't have a good setup in any local gym so I did my workouts in Herman Park in Houston. I found a big cement block to jump on and a hill outside Miller Outodor theatre to run up.

Totally Rocky stuff. I often did the box jumps with bums drinking malt liquor around me. They usually tried to send words of encouragement, but outsiders might have been confused and thought they were yelling at me.

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I'll be participating in Tom Rodgers' Texas Tri Camp (www.texastricamp.com) this weekend in Keller, Texas. Joe Friel and John Cobb will be there and we really have things running smoothly after three successful camps behind us. This is a great time to get one-on-one time with those dudes and there is typically enough downtime to get a lo of your questions asked from guys who know their stuff.

There are currently 4-5 spots still open and, interestingly enough, we tend to have people sign up the week of the event. If that's you, then bring it on; we'd love to have you. Its probably best to contact me or Tom directly. If you tell him you got your info from my blog he'll hook you up with a little discount and you'll get lots of jokes from me for no extra cost.

Keep it realz,