On Fire!

What a week it has been for training. My run-training was tough this week with 3 key sessions of runs of a long run of 100 minutes on Wednesday. Thursday was some hard tempo and hill repeats with 40 minutes of straight overgear on the bike that night and Saturday was a little 5k on tired legs in downtown Fort Worth, which brings me to the main set of this blog.

The main reason I needed to come to Fort Worth was to at Colonel's Bicycle shop for a new chain for the "Spanish Beauty", I also got new some rockin' new orange tires for her too!!!

At Colonel's Bikes

I stayed with my favorite Canadians Brent and Carley, but with the Winter Olympics taking place in Vancouver and me being the only American in the condo, I took one for the "team" and put up with their verbal and visual abuse (see pics below), such as we have more gold's than you, we're better at hockey, but all I heard was blah, blah, blah.

Anyways, Saturday morning I did a workout in downtown Fort Worth. I think Fort Worth, Texas has to be one of the fittest cities in the United States if not the whole wide world. I am not sure why Runner's World does not rank it as such. I did a warmup jog with my Coach and Pro-triathlete Brent Poulsen and recently former A&M Runner Andrew Montes to downtown and we were met by 20,000 other people who were getting ready to run too. It was so crazy, they had different distances you could choose from like a 5k, 10k, marathon, and even a freakin' ultra marathon (these guys are nuts). Fort Worth is so organized in it's running community they even had these big mile markers, water/gatorade stops and dude's calling off your splits.

Andrew and Brent were wanting get a fast 10k in while I was just hoping to hang on their shoulders for 5k. We got off to a fast start and at this fast pace I hear a Taylor Swift song "You belong with meeee" some dude is listening too it so loud while we are running and I couldn't help it and I busted out laughing. I wondered why any dude would want to listen to that song while running much less listen to it anyways. We ran the first mile in 5:01. After 1.5 miles I fell off Brent and Andrew's shoulders. The next half for me wasn't that great but I finished a 5k in 16:38 and then pulled out, which averaged out to the pace I was trying to hit 5:20 mi/pace. Andrew went onto win the 10k 32:16 and Brent finished with 4th in 33:24, with first 2 miles slightly long according to my watch.

In other light of things un-related to running or triathlon. I was sitting at the table last night going over and correcting my editations (new word I made up) Bo had given me. I was tired from the training week, I was hungry and about to pass out, and needed to shower. Yes, I did wait awhile to shower. I finally got up and said, I'm gonna take a shower, but before that we were hearing a lot of sirens go down the street. I peaked out my window and saw police lights against a house across the street. I got outside to check things out. You know how people in East Texas is. I had to be nosy and see what was going on then I said "Holy Crap! There's a house on freakin' fire!" Josh and I check things out, this trailer was up in freakin' flames. I never seen such a thing, it was like watching a movie because we couldn't do anything about it. Our water hose couldn't reach that far and there was every Fire Dept. and volunteers from the area cities helping out. Eventually we did closer and heard the guy who lived there say "We all made it out alive, but we lost everything we have." If you would like to donate something to them, send me an email about it (williamtritter@yahoo.com) and we will get it to them somehow.

A Shout out to RJ Cowan and old college running buddy who was 2nd overall in the half-marathon, he has been burning up some of the major half marathons in Texas over the past year or so, and to BO Trainor for editing my latest paper for management class and for organizing dinner at Milano's in downtown Fort Worth. Carley, for killing it during the 10k. I ran with her for my cool down and she was passing people left and right, but she wore her Canadian toboggan, she may have been trying to get away from the Americans. Also to everybody else I know who happened to show up in down townat the same time I did.

Brent, me, and Andrew doing an "ice bath" in the 54 degree pool. If I had known it was ab shot I would have pulled up my jacket too.

I'm about to go under, but Brent had some mercy. He did say if I swam 400 meters in this pool he'd buy lunch, but I turned it down.

Some of the visual abuse I had to see.

Carley in her Canadian toboggan, it even has a big ball on it.