The Life of Pizza John

This was my first time heading up to New England and it sure is beautiful!  Nice rolling green hills and amazing views.  A few of us decided to do what is called the Presidential Traverse.  It is 7 summits with almost 9000 feet of elevation gain and about 20 miles long.  The summits are named after Presidents (hence the name) and Mount Washington was the tallest.  We thought it would be fun to do on the Summer Solstice so we started at about 4am on June 21st.  The weather can change quite a bit in this region so we had plenty of water and clothes for emergencies.  We also have all the normal survival gear just in case.  I tried hiking with poles for the first time and I didn't like them at the beginning of the day, but I relied heavily on them by the end (more on this later). We started at the Appalachia parking lot and ended at Crawford Notch.  This meant we would start with Mount Madison as the first summit.  We started early with o...

I may not have qualified for Kona this year, but I got my spot to Maui!  After what ended up being an 'interesting' race, I got third in my age group.  The riding at Oak Mountain State Park is fun!  They have a lot of great single track.  Lots of easy stuff and plenty of hard riding as well.  I got up to Pelham, AL a few days early to ride the course and relax.  I was impressed they had most of the course marked two days before the race so people knew where to go.  When I rode the course a few weeks prior, I thought Boulder Ridge and West Ridge where a part of the course so I rode them and did not like them at all!  They were way too technical for a race.  Once I rode the official course, I was super please with it.  A couple technical spots, but for the most part, really fun, easy riding. The morning of the race it was pouring rain as I was setting up in Transition.  I got there early so I could get one of the end spots on a r...

What an amazing Venue!  I am already excited to go back next year. I first got to St Croix Friday evening.  David picked me up from the airport and we headed to town.  The Jump Up festival was just winding down so I headed to my hotel to leave my bags.  I stayed at the Holgar Danske and until later, I didn't realize I was right on the water!  It was a great location for the race; close to transition and close to everything I needed.  I got situated and decided to grab dinner.  I ate at the hotel bar and it was delicious but expensive. Checkin on Saturday was fun and interesting.  It was in a hot room and the volunteers were all soooo nice!  Plus, where do they give you a bottle of rum for doing a race?!?  I thought that was awesome! I did have a little bike issue on Saturday.  One of the pins in my read drop-outs got bent so my tire was rubbing.  I couldn't find another pin, but a local mechanic bent it back for me and I...

For the first two uses of my TYR Torque Pro, I loved it!  It definitely made me faster in the water and it is super comfortable.  I never got any rashes and it didn't rub wrong anywhere.  When I put it on, I feel like I just glide effortlessly through the water.  Well this was until it's third use at Ironman St Croix this year.  Everything was going as planned until I got into T1 and started to take the Torque off.  I pulled the rip cord and the zipper stuck on the fabric and broke right off!  This was an issue because I needed to get it off to finish my race.  I had no choice but to squeeze myself out of the top of it.  In the process, I tore one of the shoulders.  Not only did my transition take a lot longer than it should have, but I was bummed that my barely used TYR Torque was ruined. I finished my race and figured I would just email TYR when I got home.  I asked my coach for the receipt since he bought it at the Kona Expo l...

Another 'semi-satisfying' race.  It was not what I expected, but I beat my last course time by 11 minutes (including a worse run), so I should be pretty happy.  It was hot and it was hilly.  They changed the run course so there was an unexpected hill at the beginning.  The three loop run course is nice though so you get a lot of spectator interaction.  I am putting in my nutrition and how I felt at the bottom so I can refer to it for future races. The swim was a wetsuit swim and it was not as bad as it was two years ago.  There were not as many weeds in the water and the course seemed less crowded, but maybe this was because I went off course a lot.  Both of my transitions were super fast and I was happy with them.  Most people were just hanging around in the way of others trying to speed through.  I didn't do the rubber band trick and I don't think I will even try in the future since I am not losing time in transition from it. The bike ...

This race was just a 'trial' to work out the bugs for Florida 70.3 in three weeks.  I'm glad I did it so I hopefully won't make the same mistakes.  In most of my past triathlons, I feel great at the beginning and by the end I feel like crap.  This race was the complete opposite.  I felt like crap from the start and by half way through the bike I was feeling pretty good and stayed that way through the end. I think I messed up my nutrition (ate too much) in the morning.  I never ate or drank the whole race and half way through the bike, I felt like I was finally all digested and feeling better.  Next time I'll try not to have 5 cups of coffee and eat so much in the morning. Swim: It was a beach start where we all ran into the water at the same time.  I knew something was not right when I first got in the water.  I couldn't get enough air and I felt a little claustrophobic.  It was the first wetsuit swim of the season so I probably should h...

After having more stomach issues in Clermont, I decided to pre plan what I would like to do before my next race, so here goes! Sleep: Starting Monday, the week before the race, wake at 4am and go about normal routine otherwise.  Get to bed early. Food: Big breakfast the day before the race (also short run before).  Eggs, bacon and pancakes.  If I ride the bike the day before the race, go super easy...no intervals or out of saddle. For dinner, have pasta with meat sauce (feel free to add grilled chicken if I want).  Have no Dairy the whole day. Wake up at 4 on race day and have a bagel (cinnamon raisin or blueberry) with Peanut Butter and Honey.  Have only one cup of coffee and some water.  Once I have gotten to transition, have a big bottle of water with Scratch.  One hour out, have half a bar (or a couple bites).  15 minutes out have a goo.

We arrived in Key Biscayne on Saturday and checked into our hotel (Silver Sands).  It was super budget for the area ($169/night), but it was a great location and worked well for us.  Before riding the course, we checked in at the bike store and this was when the unorganization started.  There was no rhyme or reason to how they were helping people and it took forever to get our race packets.  It would have been ok if there were a lot of people in the store, but there were only 4 of us. Once that was done, we headed to check out the bike course. The course was not marked yet so we just rode most of the trails to get the feel for them.  It was fun and I'm glad we got to check them out to adjust tire pressure and get use to the turns. The morning of the race, they were setting up the buoys as we were heading over to the swim start.  They said it was wetsuit legal, but I didn't feel like the water was cold enough so I didn't wear one.  There was a litt...

Who though surfing a Disney wave pool could be so much fun?!?  We planned on surfing at 6:45am on a Saturday, but it was too cold for the park to open so we got to meet at 9am instead.  There were 7 surfers and a couple people to take pictures.  Daria was one of the photographer so she took all the pictures below except the last one (and the one with her in the group). With each session, you get 100 waves and you can split them into groups of 25.  You can choose from Right, Left or A-Frame.  We decided to start with 25 A-Frame waves since we wanted to get more people in the water to get use to the wave.  The A-Frame is definitely more steep than the Rights and Lefts which was fun, but you get a shorter ride.  We did Rights for the second set, Lefts for the third and A-Frame again for the last set.  Next time it would be nice to only go with 4 people so everyone could just stay in the water instead of walking around and waiting in line.  We...

Instead of buying a bunch of crap for Christmas, I decided to take Daria on a cruise.  I figured it would be something she remembers later down the line.  It was a short 3 night cruise from Cape Canaveral to Nassau and back. Daria had a blast!  On the ship we played games, ate too much food and watched some live shows.  When in Nassau, we snorkeled with Stuart Cove and had a great time.  The last of the three snorkel spots, they fed sharks below us and we got to be in the water with them.  Daria was the first one in the water and thought it was amazing!  I think I'll start doing trips for Christmas instead of 'things', since I thought this was a success!

Goodbye 2013, you have been good to me!  I hope 2014 can live up to you.  I traveled more than I could have imagined including places like the Maldives, Qatar, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Hawaii, Mexico and more! I'm not sure if I can top that list this year, but I have some good trips in the works. One of my main goals was to simplify more and buy less junk and I definitely accomplished this.  To keep me in check, some of my goals for this year are... Yoga --Press to Handstand --Scorpion in either Tiger or Handstand --Head to knee in Rabbit --Flat Stretching Work --Keep doing well at my job Triathlon --First place in a local event Other: --Fluent enough in Spanish to really communicate and get around --Read at least 12 books I have some other goals, but I'll keep them to myself :-) I'm looking forward to a great Triathlon season and some fun races.  I am already so excited about this year!!! Here are some pictures from this year that never got posted... ...

Little did we know that El Salvador is a great place to travel in November.  The weather was great, it didn't rain and not a lot of people are traveling so it as super easy to find places to stay.  Here is a rundown of what we did along the way. We flew into the San Salvador airport which is far from most towns so we had to take a cab to the coast for $30.  We made a hotel arrangement for the first night since we didn't get in till after 2am.  The rest of the trip we just figured out along the way. Costa Del Sol We spent the first night here at the Pacific Paradise hotel. It was right on the beach and nicely landscaped.  We ate their delicious local breakfast, then enjoyed the beach for a bit.  We didn't spend much time here since we wanted to start exploring so we grabbed a bus to La Libertad in the early afternoon.  We really enjoyed traveling on their buses. Each one was decorated differently, some played music, and people were always hoppi...