I finally slept in on Thursay and felt great when I got up. I started with another visit to the Lanai, watched some waves and enjoyed Kona coffee.

My only workout plans for the day was a short ride out the Queen K to the airport and back (15 miles). My legs felt great and I was amazed at how smooth the road surface is on the highway.

After the ride, I met up with the family for breakfast then Hannah wanted to go for a short training run on Ali'i. There are people running up and down Ali'i all day long and she wanted to be in the action. We ran about 2 miles and I know we were doing under 9 minute pace. Not bad for a 9 year old in Kona heat.

After the run, we visited the local beach next to the condo and then we decided to drive out to Hawi. Hawi is approximatley 52 miles from Kona and is the point of the bike turn arround. The rugged nature of the lava fields make for a stunning back drop as you drive out. We did not experience too many winds, so hopefully that will hold up on race day.

Shani and the kids also decided to make some race Grafati on the Queen K as added motivation for the bike leg.


After we got back, we had to get ready to go to the K-Swiss pre race banquet. It was a lot of fun from fire dancers to inspirational stories about who is racing. Always a motivator when you attend one of these.

My parents also arrived last night and I am sure they are tired from the trip over. Glad to have them, my sister and my Aunt Katherine here for the big dance.

Friday will be my normal pre-race routine with a 15 minute swim down at Dig Me beach, a 15 minute ride then a short run. Bob Schloegel is picking me up at 7:00 to get this out of the way. After that, it is breakfast then I will set up all my race gear. Shani and the kids are doing a helicopter ride which should be a lot of fun.

With this being our first trip to Hawaii, the beauty here is so overwhelming and to have this incredible race on top of all the Island has to offer, is an experience hard to describe.

By the time I get this post up, race day will be 24 hours away.

We have new video posted on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQt7wKDyEwk

Yesterday was an awesome day here in Kona. It started with an early morning wake up call at 3:00 AM since I could not sleep any longer with the time change. Our balcony (Lanai) has an incredible view so I just sat out there for a few hours and enjoyed the sights as the sun rose from the other side of the Island.

The kids love the private beach next door to the Condo and played out in the surf a bit while I was down at Dig Me beach doing my swim.


I posted a video showing all my exploits yesterday morning down at Dig Me Beach. My goal was to get a nice swim in and make it out to the coffee boat sponsored by Coffees of HI.

The kids also got into the action yesterday afternoon at Dig Me beach and did some snorkeling of their own.





We caught up with a few pros:


Then, we finished up last night with an awesome Luau at the King K hotel.

More to come today as I ride some of the bike course out to Hawi.

We arrived safely and on-time in Kona. The flight was a long one, the kids were awesome and all of our our luggage arrived, including the bike.

My bike case got thrown around good and one of the straps holding the bike down broke off. Everything appears to be ok, but we will find out later today after I put it together.

Last night we decided to head over to the Kona Brewery for dinner then walk around the Ironman Village so we could stay awake a little longer. A 5 hour time change is a bit tougher to get used to than I thought, as I am writing this at 3:38 AM, Kona time. I am currently sitting on the balcony of our Condo so I don't wake anyone else and I am no more than 10 yards from the ocean. You could hear the waves crashing all night and they are making that beautiful sound as I sit here and write this post.

I plan on getting a swim in down at Dig Me beach in a few hours, then head over and get registration out of the way. I am meeting up with Bob Schloegel this morning. Bob is my friend Matt's brother that has probably raced here 10 times. Bob turned 45 and is going for an AG podium in the 45-49 age group. Bob just finished 4th overall at the Redman and qualifed for this race at Wisconsin with a 9:35.

Enjoy the photos from yesterday upon our arrival in Kona. My favorite is the guy we ran into at the Timex booth after we purchased Parker a new IM watch. He had compresion socks on, so he might actually be racing. His advice to me..... "Get off your feet"

After over 12 months of training and anticipation, we are off to Kona! I am up at a ridiculous hour and can't wait to get to the airport with the family, board the plane with my bike and head off to the Big Island.

I have all of my camera gear and look forward to posting some updates via video later today. I have already posted a few videos and you can find them and all of the future ones on the top of my home page at www.timothymonk.com. I will also keep the twitter feed full of updates and will do my best to share as much of the action about the race with all of those interested.

Our schedule for today is mostly travel:

9:00 Depart House
11:45 Continental Flight to Honolulu
4:36 Connecting flight to Kona
5:19 Arrive!
6:00 Hit our Condo at the Kona Reef complex
7:00 Have a Beer or glass of Wine with my wife on our Lanai (fancy word for balcony)

We have a long day ahead of travel, so I will just try and stay relaxed and enjoy some time with my wife and kids. Thanks to Shani, my kids are great travelers and spending time with them on the road is always a great time.

Tomorrow should be a swim at Dig Me Beach and race registration. The plan for the swim is to swim out to the Coffees of HI boat and get some free coffee and take pictures with the new underwater camera.

I also have a short business meeting tomorrow at Lava Java with our new client Base Performance.

On another note, the Lonestar Multi Sport club website is now published. You can view it at www.lonestarmultisport.com. The original URL, .org, should transfer over in coming days. I hope everyone enjoys the new site.

Stay tuned as there will be more to come later today.

We leave one week from today to head over to Kona. Hard to believe the race is right up on me. The training is basically done and it is now time for a few fast workouts and plenty of rest.

As promised, I will begin supplementing my blog post with video updates as we get closer to the race. My hope is to give everyone coverage of the days leading up to the race showing all the excitement surrounding the Ironman World Championships.

The videos will be uploaded to You Tube and I will have them embedded on my home page at www.timothymonk.com. If you are really bored, be sure to follow along.

Lastly, it is that time when you begin thanking those that have helped you on the journey. I cannot thank my wife, Shani, my kids, Parker and Hannah enough for helping me prepare for this thing. They have endured me being gone most Sundays and seen me come home from a business trip, only to be running from 5:00 - 7:30 the next morning. They have done their part and now it is my turn to do mine.

I have also had many training partners on Sundays and below are a few pictures showing some of our last rides. So much of the fun in training for an event like this are the friends you make as you do the training. Special thanks to Mike, Clint, Jim, Steve, Kevin, Raul, Kyle, Al, Dana and many others for spending their Sunday mornings with me riding out to Anderson.




Also, I have to recognize my favorite charity, Girls Run. At our annual Wine Tasting event, the awesome people that make Girls Run happen raised over $70,000! We look forward to sharing those proceeds with cancer charities, especially the Livestrong Foundation in coming days.

If you want to ride your bike before work, you have to be creative. With traffic, limited time and plenty of other obsticles, you need a safe place to get your ride done. Here in the Woodlands, we have a loop known as the Woodlane Loop. I have ridden this loop countless times getting ready for this race and have done everything from recovery rides to interval sessions. The loop is 5 miles and is about 4 miles from my house.

I can leave my house and do a 20 mile ride and be back by 8:00 to start work. Here is a copy of the map:


The ride has a few distractions as well including, deer, dogs, horses and the "duelly" pick up. However, to be able to ride out my door is such a plus, that these things are minor. I know a many of athlete that have to commute via car to get a ride done. To simply roll from the garage is such a privlige. This is probably why The Woodlands was one of the best places to live and train for Triathlon as ranked by Triathlete Magazine.

I rode there this morning and realized I don't have many more of these rides until I head off to Kona. The weather was great, the legs felt good, so I snapped a few pictures:

The entrance to Woodlane


Nice Roads

Some of the wildlife I was talking about above.

Nice sunrise

Then you eat a healthy breakfast before you start work (Eggs, Rice, Green Foods Drink, and plenty of Douglas Labs vitamins)

I am traveling again for work, and had a chance to review the rest of my training plan up until the big day. The big difference is the presence of rest days, where I normally have workouts scheduled. Each week has an extra day or two of rest and my last long ride of the year is in sight!

At this point, I always do the same thing and that is second guess myself and my training by asking, have I done enough? I did this last year and everything worked out ok, so experience tells me, it is time to start the peak and rest phases of my training.

I am thankful that my coach Dana Lyons, has managed my training this entire year and looking at my results and progress, I could not be happier. When you have so many other commitments, like family and work, it is very beneficial to have someone assist with your schedule. Having your workouts planned out, gives you the ability to maximize the time you have by doing the right workouts on the right days of your training cycle.

For those that don't follow endurance sports, let me explain the taper. The taper is simply a point where you stop doing such long volumes of work and start doing less frequent but intense workouts to get you ready to race. Through a combination of rest and intensity, you hope to sharpen up to a point of peak fitness.

It can be hard to force yourself to take days off, but at this point in the cycle, you have to be confident and know you have done the work.

I still have some a few more long workouts on the schedule, including another century ride this weekend followed by a 1 hour run.

Outside of training, I have a few things to report. First, in Triathlete magazine, The Woodlands was given Honorable Mention status for being one of the best places to live if you are a triathlete. I could not agree more. The artilce also ranked Austin as second on that list, which is why that city is so much fun to visit.

We also picked up a new camera over the weekend that will let us take some underwater pictures and underwater movies while we are in HI. It was raining almost all day on Saturday, so we all jumped in the pool and took some great pictures. We also made a short movie. We picked up the Canon Powershot D10. Great camera!

Lastly, the above picture was sent to me by Kevin Barr. Kevin is also going to Kona and happened to be there last year and snapped this photo close to the run finish. I look forward to following that yellow line on October 10, 2009.

My training really kicked up a notch with some fast and long tempo running on Friday morning, fast swimming on Friday night and a hard bike on Sunday.

Sunday's effort consisted of a 1 hour warm up and then 3 x (40 minutes at IM pace and 20 minutes at Half Ironman pace). I knew the workout would be challenging, but did not know just how hard until I was done yesterday.

For the 3 hours the interval lasted, I averaged 22+mph on the bike and 234 watts. My average HR was only 147 bpm. I was real happy with this effort and it shows that my bike is really starting to come together. My total ride time was about 4.5 hours and 94 miles. Here is a screen shot of the interval for my cylcing geek friends:

I also feel I have nailed my nutrition for the longer bikes and my energy was high at the conclusion of this ride and my short run felt pretty good. My nutrition on the bike is pretty simple, 1 Power Bar an hour and 1.5 bottles of Gatorade an hour. I squeze in a gel or two if I feel it is needed.

The tough part about the ride came not during but about 3 hours afterwards. I was wiped out yesterday afternoon! I knew I would be tired, but I have not been that tired in a long time. Thankfully Shani did not mind me passing out at 9:00. I also took plenty of my Douglas Labs supplements, including Wobenzym and when I woke up this morning, I did not have too much soreness.

I was able to head out for an easy 2.5 hours this morning with Clint Bryant and Ed York and able to let the legs spin out.

The weeks are starting to get tougher as I am getting closer to race day. So far, I have been blessed with good health and plenty of support! I look forward to these last few weeks of hard training.

I updated the website this morning to bring more emphasis to the blog and twitter post. Just this past week, I had several people comment to me about things posted on the blog. Thus, someone other than my mom must be reading this thing!

When I get to Kona, I will do my best to get some daily post up. The post will contain comments, pictures and video's of the days leading up to the race. I will do my best to get as many pro athletes and other triathlon "celebrities" on the site via photo and video.

With only five Saturdays remaining to race day, I could not feel better. I had a busy past two weeks of work with travel, but still got in my runs.

As an added bonus during my business trip, I spent time with my Sister and went on a bike ride with my nephew Ryan. Ryan is a preschooler and rides the bike like no other kid I know. He tore up hills like a future Tour star. It also happened that my Aunt and Uncle were passing through Pittsburgh at the same time, so I got to enjoy a nice dinner with them as well.

My riding is feeling good and I have a hard ride this weekend to test my legs. Tomorrow will be a 100 mile ride consisting of 4 x (40 minutes at Ironman Pace and 20 minutes at Half IM pace). I hope this equates to about 220 watts for the 40 minutes and 250 watts for the 20 minutes. No big run after the ride, so I will be focused on pushing the workout.

Yesterday morning before work was a great run workout. Again I did the 4 x 2 mile repeats after a 4 mile warm up accompained by a 3 mile cool down. I started off the first 2 mile interval at 6:36 pace, then dropped it to 6:30 with the last two at 6:20. Not as fast as last time, but I did them on the road with some rolling hills versus the track. My legs felt good and I could have done another one, but needed to be back early for work.

My swims are also picking up with my pace coming down to a comfortable 1:10 per 100 yards. My goal is to have this around 1:07 per 100 by race week.

No big kid events this weekend, so I will take advantage of the time to stack on one more big weekend of training.

Back at the conclusion of the Buffalo Springs race, I just did not feel all that great. My training was there, my racing was going ok, but something was missing. I visited with a client while at work and he suggested that I try going Wheat Free to see what it did for me.

So, with nothing too lose, I gave up wheat. This meant, I had to give up a staple of the triathlete diet, pasta. Prior to this decision, I ate pasta averaging one meal a day. I also ate so much bread that Panera should send me a trophy.

At night I found myself hungary again and I would put down a few bowls of the kids cookie crisp. Everything felt good while I was eating it, but I just did not feel right afterwards.

So to give it up, I knew I still needed to eat carbohydrates. I have found great substitutes in rice, beans, fruit (mostly pineapple) and many other choices. I also found some rice noodles that were ok with some sauce when the kids were having pasta.

In 8 weeks, I have lost 10 lbs and my body fat has dropped to 7%. I also find that I am not having the huge hunger swings I once had prior to going wheat free. I come back from long rides on the weekends and can eat a sensible meal and not be starving a few hours later.

When I started this, I was worried about my ability to train and race. As it turns out, my training could not be any better and based on my results last weekend, I am obviously racing better.

In addition, I read an article in Cycle Sport America Magazine this week about the Garmin Slipstream team and how they follow a low inflammatory diet. The basis of this diet is to remove high inflammatory foods like wheat and substitute them with rice, vegetables, fruit and lean protein sources. In addition, they use a lot of monounsaturated fats (avocados, olive oil). Hello Guacamole!

I have told a few friends about going wheat free, but after reading the Cycle Sport article and reflecting back on the changes it has made for me, I thought I should share my success with others.