A couple days after receiving my invitation to participate in the Hawaii Ironman, I hired a coach with a sports training facility called Endurance Mill Valley. I made this decision in part because their training plan involves extensive physiological testing as part of the coaching regime -- think person riding a bike trainer to exhaustion with an oxygen mask strapped to his face. I had been tested by Endurance about 8 months ago, after completing Ironman Coeur D'Alene.

During my initial consultation, I met Jay Courant, a former U.S. Bobsled Team member and a physical therapist. He was assigned the task of doing my physiological testing. Jay asked a couple initial questions about my experience as a triathlete and within a few minutes came to the conclusion that my previous results were impacted by a lack of proper hydration (I do well at short distances, but fade pretty dramatically after a couple hours.) He calculated that my sweat rate was almost triple my fluid intake. Which, is not good, apparently.

Jay and I got along great, so we decided that he would be my coach, though Endurance makes it clear that it views coaching as a team effort involving input from multiple members of the Endurance staff.

The initial testing revealed that, all on my own, over the last 8 months, I had managed to increase my VO2 max (which, I think measures how much oxygen you can process in a minute) from about 52 liters per minute to almost 60 liters per minute. All the interval running I had been doing over the winter paid off. Unfortunately, my test results showed that I had gotten worse with regard to the efficiency with which I used this oxygen.

I also learned that my maximum power was 363 watts, an increase of almost 10% over last year. On a side note, I slipped out of the pedal trying to squeeze out of the last little bit of power, so I'm convinced I had a least another 10 watts in me. Jay wasn't giving credit for "equipment failure", however.

So, loaded down with all this information, Jay developed a one-week coaching plan for me. Because I'm doing the Wildflower half-ironman race in central California on May 5, the plan is basically designed to let me recover enough to do the race. I'm hoping to finish in under 6 hours (last year, I finished in 6:06).

I'm picking up the RV in Oakland today and Laura and I will pack for the trip tonight. More from Wildflower!

So, there I sit on April 15, 2007 reading the press release on the Ironman website, staring at my name on the list of lottery winners. Wow.  I've been randomly selected to compete at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii on October 13, 2007. Laura, verifies that the article says what I think it says. I save it to the desktop and print it to ensure that my name isn't just a digital hoax. Holy crap. I'd better go for a training ride. No, I'd better hire a coach. I wonder whether my coach would advise me to go for a training ride.  I'm going for a training ride -- just as soon as I stop freaking out and call everyone I know to tell them to make plans for a Hawaiian vacation in October.