244 days left

Sorry for the delay on posting, it's been a busy week.  First, last week I strained my calf after doing an 8 mile slow run which left me unable to really run for almost a whole week.  I tried to focus on swimming and biking during that week because of the injury, and I got my 1.2 mile time under 40 minutes for the first time.  The biking is hard to measure progress because I mostly have ridden the trainer lately due to cold weather and lots of rain.  This week my calf felt a LOT better, but I developed a serious bug which made working out (mostly breathing) a chore.  I fought through a few bike rides, some short runs, and a few swims at least, but I know I wasn't getting out of those workouts what I need to.  Hopefully this week will look better.  I'm starting to finally be able to breathe again and tomorrow I have a PFT, so I'll probably do that 3 mile run with some swimming also just to see how it goes.  Lastly, I received the shirts and they were all shipped out on Friday to anyone that I've received money from.  The Azalea Sprint Triathlon is 13 days from today, so that is really coming up soon.  I'll post finish (hopefully) times and all my splits once that's completed.  Thanks again to everyone supporting me and Kevin's Scholarship Fund on this journey.

255 Days to go

So it's been a few days since my last post, but I have been busy with training.  I have my 300m swim down to 5:07, which I'm hoping on race day I'll be able to be in the 4 minute range (adrenaline, drag reducing tri gear, etc).  I also have been doing my bike/run BRICK workouts.  My first I spent an hour on the trainer and ran a nice easy jog for 30 minutes.  Yesterday I biked for an hour again and ran a 5k after with a 7:34 pace, so not bad for my second brick.  Things are coming along and I have 24 days until the Azalea Sprint Tri in Wilmington.  I think this is where I'll find out how my bike progress has been going, it's too hard to tell how fast I'll be trying to train through traffic, stop lights, and poor roads. Shirts should be in on Thursday so I'll post here when I get them!

262 Days Left

Thanks to the Bicycle Shop and the 15% discount they offer club members, I am now the proud owner of a Cycleops Fluid Trainer!  For those that don't know, it's a machine that you hook the axel of the bike up to and it has a wheel that your rear bicycle wheel sits on top of and it provides resistance so I can pedal inside and it really feels like I'm out on the road.  This is a much better improvement from commuting too and from work (especially coming home at midnight), plus I get to watch our family shows while pedaling so it's a great multitasker.  In other news, I ran 6 miles the day after the superbowl and felt awful due to the food and drinks and so I hit the pool later that day which actually went pretty good.  My warm up 300 was fast (for me) and I felt great during the sprints.  Yesterday I cycled indoors with the new trainer for about an hour to loosen my legs up and I think today is just going to be a long slow steady swim of 1.2 miles, hopefully in about 40 minutes.  Tomorrow will be my first BRICK (bike then run) so I'll be sure to post how bad my legs perform afterwards.  Thanks for checking in.

264 Days Left

This week has been a really productive one already so far.  I have registered for the Azalea Sprint Triathlon which is in Wilmington, NC on March 9th.  That's going to be the only Tri that I'll be able to do before I attempt to do a Half Iron at White Lake in April.  The half is exactly half of the distances I'll have to do in October (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run).  I'm not looking forward to loosing the training time for tapering and recovery, but I think the confidence boost of completing will end up being worth it.  For anyone that wants to go to White Lake to spectate, there's a bunch of camping and log cabin places up there so get up with me and we can work something out.  I am leaning towards camping out in a tent, but we'll see if I can sell Amanda on it.  I haven't registered for the half yet, it's $160 that I don't get back if I were to get hurt training over the next couple months, so I'll wait till it gets closer and I'm pretty sure I'll be good to participate.  I'll keep you posted.  Other than races, I've received my first 2 donations this week as well as sold almost 40 shirts!  At this pace I think I'll be good to hit the  $5k goal in October.  As always, thanks again for stopping by.

First blog post

Hey everyone,
     If you've made it here, I appreciate you taking the time to support me on this quest of completing the Iron Distance Triathlon on October 26, 2013.  For this, I am fundraising to donate hopefully $5,000 to the Kevin Reinhard Scholarship Foundation by race day.  During the race I will be carrying the names of the 9 fallen Marines I knew while serving.  As I expect 2013 to be my last year as a Marine, I wanted to do this while still on Active Duty and kind of as a goodbye to the Corps as well as the Marines I knew who've passed away.  I'm going to be carrying the names of the 9 Marines throughout the entire 140.6 mile race, which includes a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and a marathon (26.2 miles).  I'm going to continue to update this blog with how training is going, what races I have coming up (I'm going to try to compete once a month until the big day) and other kinds of info like how the fundraising is coming and how you can order t-shirts.  Also, I will be creating some fundraising "events" later on including things like "If we hit $500 this month I'll shave my head and post it on youtube".  If any of you have good ideas, send them to me please!  Other than that, expect more posts later as I created this so I don't clog up the Facebook Feed with all the Triathlon news.  Thanks again for stopping by and for your support,

Eric