THE TRUTH ABOUT DOGS, AGAIN ...

I was re-reading some of my old posts and came across this one. It still makes me laugh. I posted this in May 2009.

Before rumors fly rampant I thought I would give the real story.
A few days ago I went on a bike ride with professional triathlete Bree Wee.

Wee and I rode about 50 miles, mostly uphill it seemed. We were climbing the last 5 miles or so before we reached the turn around to head back. We were moving at a pretty good pace when we simultaneously decided to have a sprint race uphill. The extremely large sounding dog in the driveway we had just pedaled past had no influence whatsoever on this decision. I promise.

I think Wee just wanted to run me into the ground, but to her surprise I flew by her and left her at the mercy of the beast quickly gaining on us. We were easily hitting 30 miles per hour (well I was, Wee was struggling to keep up), uphill on one of the toughest parts of the Ironman course.

After all was said and done I can say I out sprinted a pro triathlete up hill on the bike. Well, that's my version and I'm sticking to it.

Now the rumor going around about our "sprint" goes like this ....

Bree and I were biking along at a pretty good clip when we passed a driveway on our side of the road. We heard a large dog begin to bark. No biggie, we were moving too fast for a dog to catch us. But to my surprise that barking (a large pitbull by the sound of it) was getting closer.

I picked up the pace a little but the barking got even closer. My heart began to race, not from the pace but because I was sure I could feel the breath from that vicious, cyclist-eating pitbull on my ankle. The barking was so close now I new I was going to feel its teeth sink into my flesh at any moment.

I was pounding the pedals so hard that I left Wee to fend for herself. See ya! I have this terrifying fear of barking dogs that overrides all sanity.

Closer and closer the barking got. Suddenly, a pickup truck pulls up beside me and slowly begins to pass by. The dog's barking is in my ear now. "OMG! It's a giant pitbull!" was my first thought. And then I see it. A border collie in the back of the pickup happily barking at the funny bikers.

Relieved and embarrassed, I sit up and slow down to let Bree catch up.

Both of us laughing, I weakly muttered "Boy, that was a good opportunity to sprint. I thought that dog was chasing us."

Bree: "So did I until I looked back and saw it was in the back of that pickup."

Me: "You know, dogs are excellent sprinters." Still trying to cover my tracks.

A little while later on our way back I was riding out on the road (that's what I like about riding to Hawi, not much traffic so you can ride on the road some) and Bree was riding on the shoulder when she looked over at me and said, "not taking any chances with this dog, huh?"
I said, "What do you mean?"

She points a little ahead of us at a little rat-looking dog running along the side of the road ignoring us.

BAREFOOT RUNNING

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been trying out barefoot running. Although it's not true barefoot, I've been running in home-made huarache sandals. the shoes the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico run in. And they run hundreds of miles at a time over treacherous landscape.

I've been reading a lot about barefoot running and running in general, including the book "Born To Run" by Christopher McDougall. His book is about the Tarahumara Indians andhe is an advocate for barefoot/minimal running. I've also been following Anton Krupicka's blog "Riding The Wind" . He's an exceptional ultramarathoner who lives in Colorado. Check out some of the videos of him running on Youtube. His form is awesome. No wasted motion.

Anyhow, I've been really working on my running form and barefoot/sandal running on trails seems to be helping me get to where I need to be.


These are some huarache sandals I made. The work pretty good for getting my running form in balance. Slow and easy and build up the mileage, that's the trick. I'm up to 4 miles with the sandals on trails and an additional 2 miles on the road in shoes so far.

SUM, SUM, SUMMAH TIME IN HAWAII

Wow, it's been a month since I've posted anything here. That's the longest I've gone since I started this blog about 3 years ago. Well, here's a quick update on what's been happening on our tiny big island.

Rebecca had a great 5k race at the Kona Marathon last month. She beat her best time by about 10 minutes.

Rebecca working her way up Alii Drive during the race. She did a great job. Alii isn't flat at all and has a severe slope which makes doing a race in a wheelchair even harder.

Even though I'm still unable to run or bike too much I managed to do two ocean swim races in the past two weeks. The Hapuna Roughwater Swim and the King's Swim. As out of shape (and overweight) that I am these days I was pleasantly surprised at my time for the Hapuna swim, which is 1 mile. I did it in 26 minutes. The King's swim is 1.2 miles which I did last year in 31:36 and placed about 7th in my age group. This year the ocean was pretty rough with huge swells and a pretty strong current. I swam it in 33 minutes this year and placed 2nd in my age group. That's my 2nd-ever swimming award.

That's me coming out of the water and running to the finish line at the King's Swim last weekend. Thanks Carl Koomoa for the photo. That swim skin I'm wearing belonged to World Champion Ironman triathlete Chris McCormack and is the one he wore last year when he won the Ironman World Championship here in Kona. Karen won it from him in a contest he had while he was here. I thought I would see if it would help me swim faster -- no such luck, though.

Oh, the week before we were swimming this same course (Kailua Bay) for Masters and ran into three sharks. there's been quiet a few shark sightings here lately.

Not much else going on. I've been running a little but Monday I tweaked my knee some how and now I can barely walk. Old age sucks ...

On a sad note, our dog, Bear, who we have had for about 14 years (we got him when he was only 6 weeks old) has gone completely blind - old age sucks. We've been trying to help him adapt but it's been a struggle for him. He's learning to walk next to walls and feel his way around through the house. We're learning not to leave things where he can trip over them and not to leave doors open to bedrooms and bathrooms where he can get stuck and disoriented.


Bear in his younger days. Actually, this was taken just a couple of years ago.