So this morning marks the offical start of my Ironman Training. Starting today, I have roughly 48 weeks to get myself in decent enough shape to swim 2.4, bike 112 and run 26.2 miles. All in one day. Now I'm sure you are asking yourself, Geez Jordan, why put yourself though such an ungodly amount of pain, suffering, and hardship? Why don't you just crack a beer on a Sat morning, sit back and relax instead of waking up at 7 A.M. to do hill repeats, or to pound out a killer 8 mile run, or swim 4 gnarly loops around the concrete boat in Santa Cruz? The answer, my friends is, when I come running down that finish chute on June 27th, 2010, passing the thousands of screaming fans, friends and family cheering me on, after killing myself for 140.6 miles, the last thing I want to be thinking about is how much pain I am in. I want to finish and actually hear the people yelling, see the faces on the people standing behind the barrier, wishing they had the balls to do what I just did. Wanting to be like me, to have the annoucer say their name, "Jordan Ruiz.....YOU are and IRONMAN". I want to take it all in. Every emotion, every muscle, every contraction, every step I take, I want to feel it. Thats why I do it.
Let me give ya'll a little background on my progession in the Triathlon world.
I bought my first road bike June of my Senior year of college, so about 2 years ago. Started riding around with some buddies, just for fun nothing too serious. After a few months of playing around on my bike my sister Allison and her husband Matt said I should run the Rock N' Roll Half Marathon with them that coming October. So I trained both on and off the bike. I started running and realized that the running helped my biking, and the biking helped my running. A novel concept, I know.
As the monotomy of running started to get boring I began searching around the internet looking for new, cool things to try out. I went to a lot of bike websites and saw these awesome looking bikes that I had no idea what they were used for. Being curious I clicked a few more links which led me to the Ironman website. After a few minutes of mindlessly wandering the pages of my soon to be obession, I found a page that described it all to me. The world of Triathlons. With another quick click I found myself with a list of all the Triathlons in California. Perfect. I saw that there were many different lengths of these things varying from short distance (Sprints) to the real deal Ironmans. I saw a Sprint distance tri in Hemet, CA in Dec of that same year (Tinsel Tri). It was the perfect length, and I would have a decent amount of time to train for it. I called my buddy and riding partner Chris Sebastiani and proposed the idea of doing this tri in Dec. He was a little skeptical at first seeing how he wasn't much of a runner but after my powers of persuasion he accepted. We signed up, drove the 8 hours, and participated in our first tri.
From that moment I was hooked. Even though I wasn't, and still am not, much of a swimmer, putting all three sports together makes covering a set distance that much more fun. After the Sprint was over I needed something more, something longer. Allison informed me that Team In Training not only trained you for Marathons but for Tri's as well. So I went to the meeting, got the information and signed up for my first Half-Ironman (WildFlower Long Course).
For those novice triathlete enthusiests out there, WildFlower is the Woodstock of Triathlons. Its a 3 day festival of swimming, biking and running. Not only are there booths of bikes, nutrition info, shoes, food and all sort of stuff, but there is also a HUGE triathlon. It has been rumoured by a few that WF is the toughest Half-Ironman in the US. And since participating in it, I believe every rumor. Here is the play-by-play: The swim sucked as usual, the bike sucked more, and the run sucked even more than that. It was a very rough firs Half-Ironman and looking back on it I have realized some of the mistakes. Talking strictly cardio-wise I was in great shape, however, the other piece to the puzzle is nutrition. That, which I was not so good with. Coming out of the water I felt good, glad to be out. Around mile 46 of the bike there is a huge hill called Nasty Grade, a pretty gnarly climb. Right around that point on the bike I felt both my calves cramped up. Once I reached the top of Nasty, there is a short 500 ft bank right, then up the next hill called Heart Rate Hill. Judging by it's name, it was pretty tough. By this point everything hurt, even sweating hurt. Coming in off the bike I'm sure I looked like hell, I just know it. However, I put my running shoes on and trotted off into the distanct to tough out the 13.1 mile run ahead of me. Needless to say it was a less stellar performance that what was expected but I have lived and learned from those mistakes.
Since the traumatic experience at WF, I have done a few relays with my lovely gf Kellen. We went up to her home in Coeur D'Alene, ID and did their annual Olympic Tri. She swam and ran while I biked. And most recently we did the Silicon Valley Tri as a team again, this time I did the swim and bike and she knocked out the long run.
So here we are. Still Day 1 of training. I've got somewhat of a plan lined up for the next year. I've got a few races in mind. But it's going to be a journey. That's partially why I created this thing. Over the course of the next year, feel free to join me on a swim, pound out some hills with me on the bike, or race me on a run. Anyone is welcome. All you have to do is ask.
