I’m borrowing from David Heinemeier Hansson here. Six years ago, he wrote Rails is omakase to capture his notion of what makes a delicious software framework: it is heavily curated and borne of experience. I think of Vue.js the same way.

Here’s an excerpt from DHH’s post:

There are lots of à la carte software environments in this world… I want this for my ORM, I want that for my template language, and let’s finish it off with this routing library… It’s a very popular way of consuming software. Rails is not that. Rails is omakase. A team of chefs picked out the ingredients, designed the APIs, and arranged the order of consumption on your behalf according to their idea of what would make for a tasty full-stack framework. The menu can be both personal and quirky. It isn’t designed to appeal to the taste of everyone, everywhere.

I love this metaphor, because a) Rails, including all its API choices and baggage, has treated me very well throughout my career in tech, and b) I love me some agedashi tofu.

What does this have to do with Vue? I believe Vue’s growing popularity is partly due to its highly selective maintainers and that the recommended ingredients, though not to everyone’s taste, are well-suited to most projects, big and small.

Enjoy a multiple-course meal

Vue articulates many courses making up the full meal for a frontend framework. These days, developers have come to expect a robust API to build components and a fast implementation built on top of a virtual dom. However, Vue.js doesn’t stop there. For Vue developers, the framework and its ecosystem provide adequate if not excellent implementations of orthogonal dependencies that solve problems many non-trivial apps eventually need.

The offering includes the Vue Router, Vuex for state management, and the Vue test utils for unit testing. Through the Vue CLI, developers also get sensible defaults in Webpack configuration for hot module replacement, code-splitting, tree-shaking, efficient long-term caching, while having access to pre-configured opt-ins for TypeScript, Progressive Web Apps, ESLint, and multiple test runners.

There is great comfort in knowing that the Vue team is behind these projects and they complement one another appropriately in my Vue.js applications.

Substitutions cost little extra

So you may not agree with everything on the menu. That’s fine! Many of the defaults are easily changed through configuration or add-ons. Want to use Redux? No problem! Class-style syntax? The customer is always right. Don’t like mustache-style curly braces in templates? You can change it! Maybe you can’t stand the fact that Vue has templates at all and would prefer to use JavaScript. Well, that’s ok too; add another Babel plugin, and you can write Vue components with JSX inside of render functions a lot like React.

As another example, let’s talk about Webpack. I think it is a fantastic piece of software. I’ve spent months learning how it works. I have given a conference talk about it. However, usually, most of us, myself included, don’t want to maintain a custom configuration from project to project when we have deadlines to meet. The Vue CLI defaults are just fine. Still need to customize? Vue provides an API to extend the base configuration while making it easier to upgrade to take advantage of framework-supported improvements. There’s also nothing stopping you from ditching Webpack for Parcel or Rollup or whatever other transpiler or module bundler you prefer.

An opinionated chef

The core team consistently shows restraint in decided what features and improvements to fold into the framework. For example, much has been made of Vue’s choice to avoid class syntax for components as the default, e.g. this issue on GitHub. There are excellent reasons for this decision, one of which is for Vue to work without a build environment. As a feature, this makes Vue incredibly easy to get up-and-running, for beginners learning the framework or for seasoned developers trying out a quick prototype. “It will fail,” some said. I suppose that remains to be seen, but after several years of arguing, the framework continues to thrive.

A consistent experience for all customers

Scott Molinari made this comment on a previous post of mine:

once the usage of the API is down pat, anyone and everyone who knows Vue is basically doing the same thing. This also means the need for best practices are held to a minimum and both of these advantages mean cognitive load over time is reduced. i.e. when you dig into someone else’s component, you understand it quickly. This all in turn means Vue code is more robust and in the end, it’s of higher quality.

This point is especially important for both beginners and experienced developers alike. One of the significant tradeoffs to cobbling libraries together is that it can be harder to transition into new projects or unfamiliar parts of a large codebase. This approach may pay off for the right teams. In most cases, those tradeoffs aren’t worth it to me because I place much value on consistency.

When my late wife and I lived in New York City, our favorite restaurant was Zenkichi. The cuisine is Japanese brasserie, but the experience is so much more. If you make it to the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, you should try it.

It’s housed in a small building with a wooden exterior and no discernable markings. Located near the East River in the Williamsburg of Brooklyn, it’s easy to miss from the outside.

The interior is dark, romantic, hand-crafted. Each table upstairs is like a small private dining room with a pull-down curtain and a small buzzer to summon the wait staff.

Everytime we ate there, we chose the omakase menu. We left all the decision-making up to the chef. It’s difficult at first to place that kind of trust in someone else’s judgment. Giving up control is uncomfortable. However, this led to some delightful discoveries. Of course, not all the courses were to our liking. Nevertheless, we loved the experience.

The chef’s menu need not be reserved for special occasions in web development. With Vue.js, we have a framework that gives us all the ingredients we need to jump into building outstanding user interfaces. It also makes it relatively easy to swap out menu items to suit your preferences. So it would seem you can have your cake and eat it too? Just another reason why I find Vue.js so fulfilling.

Ross Kaffenberger

Originally published at rossta.net.

Vue.js is omakase was originally published in Vue Curious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mostly, because it’s so darn fun

I love building applications in Vue.js and here’s why I think the future is looking bright for the framework and its community.

1. No build step required

A critical aspect of the Vue philosophy is it be easy to get started. Unlike some other popular frameworks, it’s not necessary to use a complex build tool like Webpack to build an application with it. Just include a script tag pointing to the latest release for development or production, and you have access to the Vue runtime.

<script src=”https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue@2.5.21/dist/vue.js"></script>

Having a low barrier to entry makes Vue a worthy consideration as a first JS framework to learn.

2. A world-class command line interface

Of course, many developers are looking for advanced development features like ES or TypeScript transpilation, hot module replacement, and tree-shaking, made possible by build tools. Vue has you covered there as well.

npm install -g @vue/cli
vue create my-project

This past year, the Vue core team re-wrote their command line interface from the ground up, resulting in Vue CLI 3. It’s designed in such a way to promote best practices and a full-featured default Webpack configuration that should be easier to extend without making it difficult to upgrade, i.e., “no need to eject.” Vue CLI provides a ton of useful additional features, including an interactive project initialization wizard (available through the terminal or a web-based UI), a plugin system to support generators and configuration for community add-ons, and the ability to specify alternative build targets, like web components or as libraries.

3. Friendly learning curve

A common criticism I hear about Vue is that its API has a larger surface area than some other popular frameworks and I agree up to a point (depending on the framework). Ironically, another thing I hear over and over is that Vue is easy to learn. Though subjective and anecdotal, this has held for folks I’ve heard from regardless of previous experience with JavaScript frameworks and JavaScript in general.

One reason for this, I believe, is that Vue is a “progressive JavaScript framework.”

No need to learn the whole API to get started with Vue, no need to learn a new syntax like JSX; only basic HTML, CSS, and JS knowledge is required to get started.

4. A solid ecosystem

Before Vue, I’ve gotten frustrated with the fractured nature of learning best practices beyond the basics. What client-side router should I use? Which data management/Flux implementation should I use? How do I test my components? How should I configure my build system? Over time, answering these questions has gotten easier, depending on the community, but I’ve liked Vue’s approach since the start.

Vue provides official support for several essential add-ons, including vue-router for client-side routing, vuex for managing state, vue-test-utils for unit testing components, the vue-devtools browser extension for debugging, Vue CLI as described earlier. None of these tools are required Vue can work quite well with alternatives for these libraries, like redux or mobx instead of vuex, or another router. The critical point is that the community assists developers by supporting a set of very good recommended defaults, something that a backend framework like Ruby on Rails has traditionally done very well.

5. The Vue instance

The most potent aspect Vue is its reactivity system. We can tap into it through the Vue instance.

new Vue({
  el: “#app”,
})

This invocation is how every Vue application is initialized. It also creates a fully-reactive root component of the application. A Vue instance can also be used as an event bus or for tracking dependency changes separately from the application component tree, say, as an implementation detail of a Vue plugin.

Vue’s reactivity system is beautiful in its simplicity. Playing with the Vue instance is an excellent way to understanding how the reactivity system works and level up one’s Vue, and JavaScript, skills in general.

6. Vue 3 lands this year

Speaking of Vue’s reactivity system, Vue 3 is expected to ship this year. Among some architectural and performance improvements and minor API changes, Vue 3 provides a new Proxy-based implementation of its reactivity system.

The Proxy-based system solves some of the known caveats with Vue change detection:

In Vue 2, Vue cannot:

1. Detect property addition, e.g., vm.b = 2
2. Detect array modification through indexing or modifying length, e.g., arr[0] = 2

* The workound: use Vue.set, e.g., Vue.set(vm, ‘b’, 2)

Vue 3 Proxy-based reactivity makes these annoying issues go away.

7. An amazing community

Since I’ve started using Vue, I’ve been fortunate to learn from a variety of Vue developers through forums, on Twitter and GitHub, and at local meetups. Vue has a distributed, hard-working core team, who are continually improving the framework without over-burdening developers with a bunch of fringe features or painful upgrades. The Vue forums is a great way to get insight from experts on tricky issues. Vue conferences, like VueConf.us and Vue Amsterdam, a great way to connect with other members of the community and attend more in-depth workshops, are already taking place all over the world. There’s also Vue Vixens, an organization that provides safe environments for people who identify as women to learn Vue.js.

Bonus. It’s just plain fun

I got my start in web development just as the Ruby and the Rails framework was taking off. One thing I have always loved about Ruby is creator Yukihiro Matsumoto’s explicit (and, dare I say, audacious) goal of inventing a language optimized for developer happiness.

I get these same feelings when I build interfaces with Vue.js. I was spending less time wrestling with configuration and APIs and more time building and having fun doing it.

While I don’t know Vue.js was created so explicitly in the name of developer happiness, it has and continues to be fulfilling to that end. It’s something I hear from many others who’ve taken time to learn the framework and it’s probably the most important reason I’ll recommend Vue.js in 2019.

So what are you waiting for? Best of luck with your Vue.js journey in the coming year.

Ross Kaffenberger

Seven Reasons to learn Vue.js in 2019 was originally published in Vue Curious on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Another triathlon race season comes to an end.

I became a three-time Ironman when I crossed the finish line at Ironman Chattanooga this past September 30. I’m extremely blessed to have accomplished this feat and owe so much to my family and teammates who have helped make this possible.

I’ve waited a few weeks to collect my thoughts about this race. Immediately afterwards, I was disappointed in the outcome, to say the least. Not so much with the time on the race clock (because every race is different and difficult to compare), but with my ability to rise to the challenge. Chattanooga’s heat and hills on the run course were my biggest obstacles and I just don’t feel I handled them as well as I potentially can.

However, to say this race was a failure would be unfair. I executed my race plan to a T on the bike by staying conservative and I still set my Ironman bike PR by nearly 24 minutes. My training this year has been as consistent and intense as ever. I’m running faster in my workouts, my power threshold on the bike is rising, and my swim is gradually coming into form. This race was just hard, and I could have easily dropped out at the halfway point when the race started to overwhelm me. I let some negative thoughts into my head. Sometimes I had to walk. But I kept going. I didn’t quit. And as the sun went down, I rediscovered my heart and my legs and I finished strong.

So, now that I’ve had time to reflect, I’ve came away with a few lessons that I’ll try to take with me into next season.

Expectations are dangerous

Though I wouldn’t go so far to say that I expected to post a certain time or come in a certain place in my age group, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was hoping to beat my results from Wisconsin last year. This, despite knowing that the course, the conditions, and the competition were completely different; these are all things out of my control. Wisconsin has a relentlessly difficult bike course and a relatively flat run. Last year at IMWI, the weather was absolutely perfect for me. Chattanooga’s bike course is no cake walk, but compared to Wisconsin, it’s much faster and more forgiving, but the run course is *brutal*. So, there’s really no comparison for the age group athlete.

Though my run is greatly improved, I’m far from an elite distance runner, so, if I’m being honest with myself, I just haven’t yet developed the fitness to hold up over an Ironman distance in Chattanooga conditions. At Wisconsin, the cool weather and mostly flat course allowed my body to continue pushing through the run. To expect the same of my body at Chattanooga may have been premature.

For this race on that day, my hopes for performance didn’t quite line up with reality so I’ll try harder to adjust my expectations to match my fitness with the conditions in the future.

Sharpen my nutrition plan

It’s fair to say I don’t fully understand my nutrition needs for long course racing. I did create a nutrition plan with expected calorie and sodium intake and mostly stuck with the plan on the bike. My plan is based mostly on my training knowing what I feel like I my stomach can handle. This plan is more precise on the bike when I’m trying to complete a math problem. On the run, I’m just trying to hang on and taking what I can. so whatever I had planned prior to the race is mostly forgotten as I enter survival mode. For this race, I didn’t really account for different needs created by the hot conditions either.

I’m not sure what the solution is yet, but I have a feeling my race performance could have been better with a more well-informed approach to nutrition. Time to read up in the offseason.

Limit stress race week

Just to make it to the start line of an Ironman, healthy and ready to race, is a special thing. It requires a lot of hard work. For many of us, it requires support and sacrifice from our loved ones. It also takes some good fortune.

In my case, this included having a spare rear wheel in town and a phenomenal family, who rushed it to transition mere minutes before the last call for the race start. I’m grateful to have discovered the problem with my original wheel in time. I’m grateful to my family without whom this all wouldn’t have been possible. I’m grateful to Cassie, the amazing volunteer who lent me her cell phone and stayed with me for over a half hour while I waited, and to the bike mechanics who switched out my cassette and pumped up my tire while I got myself together.

If the swim hadn’t been cancelled, it’s possible I wouldn’t have discovered the mechanical issue until it was too late and I would have been out of the race. The rolling bike start gave me just enough time and I got to experience being, *literally*, the last one to get on the course. It may not have been the start I had in mind, but seeing the C26 crew on my way out helped remind me to have fun and it ended up being a great day.

While this ended up being a great story, it was very stressful. That was a good hour-plus of me scrambling to get my bike race ready, pretty much up to the last minute before the course closed. To be honest, this stress could have been avoided. It largely reflected my hectic week leading up to the race, which included caring for my two-year old while traveling and keeping my family happy in less-than-perfect housing a few miles from the race venue. I could have done a lot better at being organized upfront and having a contingency plan in place—already thinking about improvements for next year.

Because: sports

My senior year in high school, my soccer team made it to the Virginia high school state championship game. We were a small school—there was only one prior state championship in our school’s forty-year history at the time—so it was quite an accomplishment to have made it this far. We lost 1–0 to our rival. We were a good team and played valiantly, but we just didn’t quite play at the level we needed to win. And that happens in sports. Sometimes, to have our best performances, things just need to come together. We can control some of the factors, like our attitude and execution, but much of it is beyond our control.

I just don’t think I had “it” at Chattanooga. I was as fit as I’ve ever been coming into the race, but just didn’t peak on race day. The fact I didn’t perform to the best of my ability doesn’t diminish the progress I’ve made in training.

I’m proud of my effort, not only during the race, but throughout this whole year. All this while dealing with stress at work and life in general. Chattanooga may have humbled me, but that’s a good thing. It keeps me hungry.

Jan Frodeno, perhaps the greatest triathlete of all time, recently said, “Progress is not linear.” Though I got knocked down a bit and didn’t get any closer to the podium, I believe this season was a success and I’m excited to build on it for next year.

So what’s next? Well, I’m already signed up for my next Ironman race: I’ll be at Ironman Lake Placid on July 28, 2019. You can follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Humbled was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was a senior in high school the first time I heard about the Ironman. Endurance sports wasn’t really a thing I was interested in back then. I played on the high school basketball and soccer teams. We had to run sprints and mile time trials on occasion, but I hated it. Running for distance gave me side stitches. I hadn’t swam much since grade school. I almost never rode my bike.

You can imagine how hard it was for me to fathom why anyone would want to do an Ironman. My basketball coach, Coach Young, introduced us to the race during a team dinner — it was that time of year. He tuned into the the NBC coverage for the Ironman Championship race in Kona. I remember seeing the hot lava fields and the suffering on the faces of the participants.

Coach Young was a very fit, disciplined, hard-working, intense man. He competed in Ironman races and looked the part. He clearly loved endurance sports. I think introducing us to triathlon was an attempt to inspire us (we weren’t a very good basketball team). Maybe he wanted us to see what real dedication was all about.

Do you have what it takes? my coach seemed to be asking.

“Yeah, right.”

This past May 20, 2018, a far cry from my senior year, I completed Ironman Chattanooga 70.3. It was a hot one—almost Kona-like. I may not have had the best stretch of training in the weeks leading up to the event, but I’d been going at it fairly consistently for nearly a year and a half; by race day, I felt ready.

At the swim start, I dropped off my gear bag. The volunteer took my things and asked with an empathetic tone, “Are you nervous?”

I smiled. “No.”

Looking back, the attitude behind that answer is what I remember most about the race.

Confidence.

I knew this race would be tough, but I also knew I could handle it. I may still be learning how to reach my potential, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know I’d be mentally prepare to deal with whatever the race might throw at me.

I’d fight back.

I held back on the swim and the bike to give myself room to suffer on the run yet I was still on personal record pace. Both my swim (primarily because of a short course and favorable current) was the fastest I’d ever done a half-IM swim. I rode my second fastest time for a HIM bike despite riding a notch well below what I’d consider my ideal effort for this distance. My bike is a weapon and it showed.

By the time I hit the run, I still had a lot in the tank, but I could feel the battle was about to begin. The heat and humidity was reaching its peak. I went out at what felt like a comfortable pace. I peeked at my watch a mile in. It registered a pace that would put me well ahead of my best HIM run. But I was starting to worry.

I finished the first loop strong, then the fatigue hit me. Starting the second loop, I knew I had several miles ahead with no cover from the hot sun. Doubts crept in. My confidence dipped for the first time. I decided to chug a Coke at the next aid station to give me a boost. That would prove to be a mistake.

Coke on the tail end of a long distance triathlon run can be a godsend. Usually, you want flat Coke. That’s not what I got; the Coke I drank was fully carbonated. With minutes, a gas bubble had formed in my gut. I couldn’t clear it. It got painful and it was slowing me down.

So this was the test.

Do you have what it takes?

I stayed patient. I focused on putting one step in front of the other and cooling myself off every opportunity. Somehow, I muscled through it. Finally, with about three miles left, I was in the clear. I couldn’t quite get back to my original pace, but at least I was racing again. I’d survived the test.

At the finish line, I saw my friends and basked in the glow of another successful half-Ironman, my personal best. The mood around the finish line at Chatt was festive. The steady stream of athletes crossing the finish line was accompanied by the enthusiastic voice announcing their names to loud, energetic music.

Glancing across the field, I recognized another finisher, someone I hadn’t expected to see, someone I hadn’t seen since high school. It was Coach Young. Still fierce and fit and killing it at triathlon.

He was understandably surprised to see me. It had been a long time since he’d moved from Virginia to Tennessee. It took a beat for him to place who I was as I approached him out of the blue to say hello. It was surreal to catch up and stir up old memories. Wins and losses. Struggle and triumph.

Perhaps it was surreal for him as well, to see a former student and player of his grown up, surviving, challenging himself. Tackling Ironman no less. Thanks for the introduction.

Do you have what it takes?

I’ll be back in Tennessee racing Ironman Chattanooga on September 30, 2018. Follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Do you have what it takes? was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last week, I took a short vacation to do triathlon. I packed my equipment and drove over ten hours to Nashville, Tennessee to participate in the Crushing Iron Triathlon Camp. During the three day adventure, I swam nearly 5,000 yards, ran 20 miles, and biked over 90. That may not sound like a vacation to most folks, but to me, it was the perfect escape; a great opportunity to push pause on the stresses of work and single fatherhood. I challenged my mental and physical self alongside some of the best people I have met. And it was a lot of fun.

Now that I’ve had a chance to recover a bit post-camp, I wrote down some things I learned.

Nashville is a great place to play at triathlon. Nashville is known as Music City and, apparently, a popular bachelorette party destination; it’s also a triathlete’s dream. Our camp schedule had us training in and around Nashville at some of the very best places I have had the opportunity to swim, bike, and run. We practiced our open water swimming skills out at Anderson Road Beach (pictured above). The lake there is calm and clear. Swimmers have a large area to roam free of boats. Percy Warner Park has some of the most challenging terrain to run with lots of shade from the sun. And the Natchez Trace: if there is a more perfectly paved highway for cycling, extending hundreds of miles virtually car-free, I haven’t found it.

Training with friends is a beautiful thing. There’s certainly something to shared suffering that brings a group of people together. In that respect, the group of folks with whom I spent triathlon camp was exemplary. Most of us met in person for the first time at the start of camp having known each other only through our Facebook group—not much more than the past year since online community for Crushing Iron was born. We shared a lot of laughs. Lasting friendships developed. For that we are blessed given we love a sport where most of the hard work happens on our own when no one is watching.

Three mediocre poops does not equal one glorious dump. Triathletes need to be conscious of three things at all times while training or racing: their current level of effort, food intake, and the nearest acceptable place to relieve themselves. Several consecutive days of heavy sports drinks and Honey Stinger consumption left me running for the john with frequency. Taming my digestive system is still a work-in-progress.

The obstacle is the way. I have learned a thing or two about resilience in the past two years. Enough to know that we all have the potential to become more resilient. A big part of becoming more resilient is letting go of things we can’t control. Another: willingness to face one’s fears. For me, that used to be doing anything like this at all. Before I started triathlon, I never would have dreamed of attending a camp like this (too hard). I would have laughed at the idea of a 60-mile bike ride or an 11-mile run. These things now don’t scare me the same way. That said, this weekend, I was still scared. Not because I didn’t think I could do it, but I was afraid of going as fast and as hard as I thought I should now that I’ve been improving. Exploring limits is always scary. Sometimes, I let it get the better of me.

On Friday, our coach had us riding hard intervals for over an hour and a half at “The Lab”. It’s an old abandoned airport open for recreation. Flat. Windy. No shade. Hot as hell. You can practically feel the heat baking off the surface below:

Near the end, my coach rolled up and said, “Go run”. I had to run 4 miles, three times around that airport track, and catch all my teammates who had started before me without getting caught by those behind me.

I got off my bike and knew my legs were tired. I was hot. I thought, “I can’t do it”. I thought about quitting rather than face the pain. I was scared. But I started moving anyway. Then I recognized the opportunity before me. To overcome an obstacle. To do something great. To become more resilient. And my attitude changed.

Then I ran like hell.

It was the best feeling in the world, proving to myself I was capable of more than I thought. It’s a lesson I need to keep learning—I went through the same thing the very next day—but I’ll remember for a long time how I handled myself.

Out there on the blacktop. In Nashville, Tennessee. Surrounded by friends.

I’ll be racing Ironman Chattanooga on September 30, 2018. Follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Four things I learned at triathlon camp was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Nor is it only measured by the numbers

When I got started in triathlon, I somewhat naively thought that my progress might look like this:

I’d deluded myself into thinking my paces, my power, my race times—certainly after training for weeks, months, years on end—would result in constant improvement and success.

There’s no doubt, looking back where I started, that I’ve improved. At my first Olympic distance triathlon, I had been swimming, cycling, and running for about five months, but I truly had no idea what I was doing. I finished with a respectable time, and I’m lucky to say, every Olympic race I’ve done since has been faster. But, not every race has been faster than the last. My progress has looked more like this:

Looking at any aspect of my training and racing—my half-Ironman run pace, my threshold bike power, my critical swim speed, etc.—tells the same story.

Progress isn’t linear.

From day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year, I sometimes get faster, and often get slower or show no improvement.

Getting faster is only one measure of growth.

Assuming the my effort isn’t the issue, there may be other reasons for regressing or plateauing. Some of these are within my control and some are not.

No matter what the case may be, I try very hard not to let these numbers affect my self-perception. It’s okay to push for better results, but it is not okay to identify with them by saying things like

I’m slow

I’m never going to improve

I’m a terrible athlete

Every now and then, I fall into that trap.

I witnessed some amazing success from my teammates this weekend at their races. Tons of PRs. A bunch of podiums. I am thrilled for their achievements, which are testaments to their hard work.

This post is not for them (right now at least).

To be honest, I was a little jealous. I did not race this past weekend. I do have not much to show in my training lately in terms of results. My swim is slower than it was this time last year. I’ve been struggling to get through a run lately without stopping in the port-a-john (twice this past Sunday). I haven’t ridden my bike outside since last October. Looking ahead to my first race of the year at IM Chattanooga 70.3 in three weeks, it was difficult to avoid feeling down on myself, to be frustrated, to make excuses, and to question my training. Seeing others have success exacerbated all that.

So I took a step back and remembered how far I’ve come. I’d encourage everyone to do the same every once and awhile.

I’ll bet there were quite a few folks I didn’t hear about who also raced this weekend. Folks who worked their butts off in training but didn’t podium or PR or have a major breakthrough on the race results page.

To everyone who had that kind of weekend, I say, job well done.

You’re a champion in my book if you gave it the best you had, you’ve taken your results in stride and you wake up tomorrow and get after it all over again.

It’s true, I may not PR at Chattanooga. I may not even have a good race. I may not have the results to prove I’ve had only three days off from training since December 31. Growth doesn’t work like that. And I accept it.

On May 20, I will jump in the Tennessee River and pour my heart and soul into my swim, bike, and run over the course of 70.3 miles. No matter what my finishing time says, I will have done something no one else has done, which is to have lived my life, walked in my shoes, stepped up to that line, and given it everything I could.

That is growth in my book.

I’ll be participating in Ironman Chattanooga 70.3 on May 20, 2018 and Ironman Chattanooga 140.6 on September 30, 2018. Follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Getting the year started off on both feet

I have completed at least one workout (sometimes two) every day since the start of the new year.

This is what it looks like on my training calendar:

I’ve only missed one workout (the red one). All the green and yellow blocks are completed workouts. There’s at least one every day in 2018.

As of today, that’s twenty-three training days to start the year. Tomorrow, I hope to make it twenty-four.

I’ve never in my life had a stretch like this during which I completed a focused workout every day. This comes on the heels of a very active 2017 during which I prepared for and completed not one, but two Half-Ironman distance races and then Ironman Wisconsin. I’m running and cycling better than I ever have in my life. It has a lot to do with consistency. It’s something my coach harps on.

This is how I’m measuring success this year. Though I’d love to set some PRs, I won’t equate success with my finishing times at Ironman Chattanooga 70.3 or Ironman Chattanooga 140.6, the two big races for which I’m training. It’ll be based on how well I committed to my training plan and got myself to the pool, on the treadmill, on the trainer, or out on the road and I put in the work. Day in. Day out. Over and over like waves on the sand. Relentless.

This all isn’t to say I won’t miss a day here or there. I will get sick. Work may get in the way. As a single dad, I won’t always have extra help caring for my boy. But, most days, I expect to be active. If all goes well. I won’t let excuses get the better of me. I won’t succumb to the snooze button. Now that I’ve begun to experience the physical and mental adaptations that come with that consistency, I believe the results will follow.

My buddies on the Crushing Iron podcast brought up a Bill Belichick quote that’s resonated with me (Source: SBNation):

Q: With all that you have accomplished in your career, what are some of the things left that you still want to accomplish?

BB: I’d like to go out and have a good practice today. That would be at the top of the list right now.

I’m in the the best shape of my life. Next month, I expect to be even better. Yes, I’m training for an Ironman again, but I’m no longer just training for an Ironman. I’m on a mission to seek out the limits of my potential. It’s going to take a lot of work. It’s going to require many days (weeks, months, years) of consistent and relentless commitment to my training.

I may not ever get there. That’s ok. The results are not my focus. Right now, I’d just like to have a good training day tomorrow.

Why consistency is my goal was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Looking back on from where I’ve come

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

The American Buddhist author, Pema Chödrön, pinned this message to her wall as a daily reminder of letting go and of acceptance as she explains in her book, When Things Fall Apart.

Things fell apart for me last year when my wife Jennifer passed away in her sleep suddenly and unexpectedly. She had dealt with health complications her entire life yet, I was blindsided, unprepared, devastated. The events surrounding her passing were deeply traumatic. She was too young. We had so many plans and adventures to look forward to.

What we had been looking forward to most was parenthood. Though we weren’t medically able to carry children ourselves, we had found a surrogate from Wisconsin to carry our child for us. The embryo transfer was performed in mid-December and, after a few weeks of testing, we had confirmation on December 25th, 2015 that the procedure was successful: we were going to be parents to a baby boy. It was the most wonderful Christmas present. It was the last Christmas I shared with Jen.

When Jen passed away, our surrogate was six months pregnant. In the moments that followed, I realized… Jen would never get to meet her son; He would never get to meet his mother; I would have to raise him without her. It broke my heart.

In those moments, I also found an ounce of resolve. I knew I was now faced with the biggest challenge of my life and I would have much to learn to handle it. But someone had already taught me how. I was married to her.

Because of her medical conditions, Jen had faced adversity her entire life. She had been on dialysis for years at a time. She had endured multiple kidney transplants. She had survived sepsis. She’d recently completed six months of chemotherapy. She was literally scarred from countless surgical procedures and hospital visits. Yet, she was the most joyful person I’ve ever known. Full of laughter and love. She always put others first. Her courage and grace under the circumstances was astonishing. Can you imagine? So I pledged to be the best father I can be under the circumstances. I owed it to her and our boy.

He was born in Madison, Wisconsin on a hot August morning last year. I named him Jasper Thor Kaffenberger, after his mother (her initials JAS) and her great grandfather. The hospital staff was sympathetic to my situation and set me up with a room next to my surrogate. That first night was incredible and terrifying all at once. The nurses and my surrogate’s friends and family helped get me through.

My mother and Jen’s mother arrived soon after. We spent a few weeks in town learning (in their case, relearning) how to care for a newborn. We got to known our surrogate’s family. We got to know the city. Someone mentioned Ironman Wisconsin was a few weeks away. “Oh?” I said.

Back in 2010, I’d been inspired to pick up triathlon after team sports were no longer an option for me on my bad knee. Jen had encouraged me and cheered me on every step of the way. She has been there for almost every major race I’ve entered. She put up with my long training hours and mood swings during taper weeks. I’d run a few marathons and completed Ironman Coeur d’Alene back in 2014. After that, I backed off to focus on her health, my job, and our future plans.

I hadn’t realized there was an Ironman in Wisconsin, no less in Madison (hey, I’m an East Coaster). I got interested. I started running again. I jogged a loop of the marathon course. Back home with Jasper weeks later, I followed along on race day in between bottles and diaper changes. Then I signed up within days of registration opening up for 2017. I wanted to be an Ironman again.

Dedicating myself to training this past year has been a form of therapy for me. Training is controlled suffering and it is rehabilitating. I’ve come to understand how the daily physical exertion breaks down my body and, given time to heal, I become stronger. Through training, along with the unwavering support of my family and with the love of a beautiful baby boy, who everyday reminds me of his amazing mother, I’m learning to live with my grief.

It’s hard to describe how happy I felt during the race. This inner strength I’ve discovered and my gratitude for all I’ve been blessed with carried me through months of training, all the way to that finish line this past September. The race was the easy part.

I felt I was floating during the marathon. I couldn’t help but smile. I was thinking… I can survive. I can move forward. I am grateful. I am resilient. I’m going to be ok.

I found something indestructible in myself.

I’ll be participating in Ironman Chattanooga 70.3 on May 20, 2018 and Ironman Chattanooga 140.6 on September 30, 2018. Follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Why I triathlon was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Race report from Ironman Wisconsin 2017

Just over twenty miles into my race at Ironman Wisconsin, I was standing next to my bike somewhere on a quiet country road south of Madison. Things were not going well.

At this point of the Ironman, I had been riding my bike over an hour. This is just a fraction of the 112-mile bike course that traversed the farmlands outside the state capital. The bike leg would take me nearly six hours of continuous cycling to complete. This, of course, is only one leg of the Ironman. I had already completed the 2.4 mile swim in cool calm waters of Lake Monona. I still had to run a marathon.

At 6:50am, my wave of 40–44 year olds plodded into the lake and scrambled to get into position. As I treaded water behind the start buoys, just left of a water ski ramp, I waiting for the start signal, I did not feel ready. I felt sluggish and tired. I’d been looking forward to this race all year but I wasn’t excited the way I’d expected. I remember how I felt before my first and previous Ironman at Coeur d’Alene back in 2014. Back then, I felt strong and energetic. This time was different. I knew what I was in for. And I was worried.

I’d had a miserable, cold, windy recon ride two days before. I was supposed to go for an “easy spin”. Riding up and down a short portion of the hilly course was way more taxing than it should have been. Afterwards, I felt exhausted. I questioned my preparedness. Maybe I missed too many workouts. Maybe I should have worked harder. I hadn’t been getting enough sleep. My mind was starting to believe my body wasn’t up to the task.

As I treaded water, surveying the long swim in front of me, my thoughts were racing.

I’m not ready.

Suddenly, I hear “Go! Go! Go!”. Mike Reilly, the venerable face and voice of Ironman, was shouting. My race had begun. Calm turned to chaos. Hundreds of bodies began swimming at once. Arms, legs, bodies thrashing. Mouths gasping for air. Heads turning and lifting for a glimpse of the horizon. I was one of them. A speck among thousands. If I didn’t quit first.

I swam as hard as I could sustain the entire swim. It felt too long and too far. At times I had open water in front of me, only to be sideswiped by a faster swimmer; other times I’d plow directly into a clump of slower swimmers with whom I’d caught up, only to be forced to redirect my way around. I couldn’t find a clean path close to the buoys, so I strayed off to the side, mostly to my detriment. By the time I finally made it back to shore and lapped my Garmin, I’d been swimming for an hour and 13 minutes, over five minutes longer than expected.

According to GPS, I’d traveled over two hundred extra yards. More negative thoughts: I’m not having a good race.

Now it was time to hop on my bike. I’d been concerned about some mechanical problems I’d been having. I’d had the bike serviced about a week prior to repair the shifters, adjust the derailleurs, and tune the brakes. Unfortunately, the brake had been rubbing the back tire during my recon ride. I adjusted it then, but, in a fit of obsessive-compulsion, I fiddled with it just before the race without testing it out. Big mistake.

Within minutes of starting my ride, I heard the unmistakable, unwelcome squeal of the brake pad on the wheel’s brake track. It happened every time I added a little extra torque on the right side. I told myself, it’s not that bad. I wished for it to go away. I didn’t want to stop—this is Ironman!, this isn’t supposed to happen! I’ll wait until the special needs stop… in 56 miles. I felt my energy sapping away with each rub—this is not good.

By mile twenty, I couldn’t take it any longer. I hopped off to attempt some on-course mechanics. I felt the whooshes of other competitors flying past me just a few feet away. I fiddled with the rear brake and hopped back on the bike. I pedaled and few times and heard more squealing. Damn! I tried again. Off the bike, more whooshing, and I tried rotating the caliper just slightly to one side. Let’s hope this does it.

Before getting back on the bike, I paused. I realized, up to this point, I hadn’t been enjoying myself. I had let a few setbacks dictate my attitude and I acknowledged I wasn’t responding well.

It’s not what happens to us, but how we respond that matters.

I’d spoken these words less than three months prior during my talk at GORUCO, a talk about handling adversity. I suddenly realized how quickly I’d forgotten what I already knew coming into this race. I knew Ironman was going to be hard. But I also knew it’s all in the name of fun. There are a lot of reasons grown adults choose to subject themselves to 140.6 miles of grit and determination, but if none of those reasons are fun, it’s all going to hurt.

So, right there, standing next to my bike, losing time to scores of other athletes, I took a deep breath. Then I smiled.

Let’s do this.

In a flash, I was back on my bike. No squealing this time. I felt a surge of adrenaline. My smile widened.

Game on.

For the rest of the bike leg, I raced the way my coach, Robbie, and I had planned. I watched my power meter, kept pedaling, ate cookies, and drank Gatorade. I held back when others raced ahead on the uphills. Then I turned on the juice to maintain momentum on the downhills. The course was hilly, windy, and winding over rough roads—tough—but after my attitude adjustment, I loved every minute of it. As the race wore on, I felt like I was getting stronger while others around me were slowing down.

As I made my way through the “Stick”, the homestretch of the Wisconsin bike course, I passed some familiar faces. My sisters, my parents, my son, and our extended family of my son’s surrogate birth mother had been waiting for me. Heyyyyy family! Another surge of energy.

Bring on that run.

The final leg of the Ironman is a marathon. It looms over your swim. It taunts you on every hill of the bike. Like the final boss of a challenging video game, you arrive depleted to face an impossible task. You’ve lost hit points for 114.4 miles. Congrats. Now you have to run 26.2 more.

As I rode back to the transition area, though, I knew I was ready. I remembered how exhausted and beaten I’d felt as I finished the bike ride in 2014 at Coeur d’Alene. This time was different. I had energy. I let out a whoop as I climbed up the Monona Terrace parking lot ramp back into transition. I was anxious to see how far I’d come in my training. I handed my bike to some helpful volunteers—our Ironman valet— and jogged inside to find my running shoes, getting my game face on.

The immediate switch from cycling to running is disorienting. I, like many triathletes, feel for the first mile or so, disconnected from my legs. After several hundred yards, my brain tells me you’re running too slow, pick up the pace!, but my watch shows my pace already a full minute faster than my plan. It took some steady will power to slow myself down. Couple this with the fact that the first mile out of transition at Wisconsin is predominately downhill, and some of my fellow competitors were “flying” through the first mile. I let them all go. Maybe they’d be able to keep up that pace, though I suspected I’d see quite a few again as I caught back up with them. Tortoise and hare. We had hours of running on the road ahead.

I had run this course before last August when my son was born here in Madison. In my head, I broke the course into segments and just focused on running one segment at a time. After a few miles of mentally slowing myself down, I braced myself for “the wall”, the huge collapse of energy I encountered at CdA when it became difficult to move my legs at all. I told myself, if it comes, I’ll deal with it.

So I kept running. And I waited. Around mile 5, the road turned sharply uphill onto Observatory Drive—it’s got an observatory for a reason—and all the athletes around me started walking. I could’ve walked too, but I wanted to run up the hill. Being careful not to overdo it, I jogged past other athletes. It took a long time to get to the top. But as I crested the hill and started down the other side, I was surprised by what happened.

I felt stronger. And I started smiling again.

I couldn’t believe I was still running. My confidence started to rise. I had twenty miles to run and I was looking forward to it. I drew energy from the crowds of spectators on State Street. People seemed surprised to see an athlete smile. (That made me smile even more).

I thought of my family and friends. I though of what how lucky I am to be blessed with a beautiful baby boy. To have the opportunity to do this race in the city where he was born last year.

I felt lucky to have had Jen in my life. Even though she is gone, I am eternally grateful to love and have been loved by an amazing woman. Thinking of her gave me strength. Perhaps because I had given so much of my physical and mental energy to the race up to this point, all that was left was emotion. I gave into it. I spoke to her and she carried me. When I felt pain, I thought of her and smiled. The pain dissolved. I felt more alive than at any point in the past year since she passed away. I was crying and smiling at the same time. And I ran better than I’ve ever run before.

When I crossed the finish line, I was overwhelmed. My sisters, my parents, my son, and his birth mom were all there. Mr. Reilly was there, as he would be for every single finisher that day, to proclaim:

Ross Kaffenberger, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!

He also called out a dedication: For his wife, Jennifer.

She was there with all of us. And what Mr. Reilly said is true. I did this for my wife, as an expression of perseverance, to let her know, I am ready to carry on for the both of us. I’m going to take care of our boy.

I’m going to be okay.

This race has made me believe I can run. For awhile, I’ve believed in my potential to be a great swimmer and cyclist. But at 6'6" and nearly 200 pounds, I’ve also talked myself into accepting running is my weakness. All those “little” people are built to be runners, not you. But with this race, that’s all starting to change.

At Wisconsin, I finished the marathon in under four hours, over twenty minutes faster than my first and previous Ironman in Idaho. And I nearly set my personal best for any marathon. Even more telling than the finishing time is how I compared to the field. At Idaho, I lost ground to the rest of the field throughout the day, from swimming to biking to running, finishing 283rd out of 2,466 athletes (top 12% overall). At Wisconsin, I gained ground at each leg. Compared to the field, the run was my strongest. Only 166 people out of 2,898 ran a better marathon. I finished in 170th place (top 6% overall), 20th in my division, 40–44, one of the toughest in all of triathlon.

Boy, am I glad I got off the bike to reset. Sometimes, all we need is a pause, and a deep breath, to remind ourselves what is important.

Also, it doesn’t hurt to smile more.

I completed Ironman Wisconsin (IMMOO) on September 10, 2017. For the nerds, here are the links to my swim, bike, and run data for IMMOO.

I’m looking forward to tackling my next Ironman in 2018. More to come. Follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Smile, You’re an Ironman was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many firsts in my second race of the season

The Rev3 Williamsburg Half was the second of three races on my calendar this year and, like a middle child, somewhat ignored. Sandwiched between the excitement of my first race since 2015 at Rev3 Quassy and my ultimate challenge, Ironman Wisconsin, looming in September, my preparation for Williamsburg was less than stellar.

How not to train for a 70.3

First, spend a little to much time recovering from your last 70.3 . After Rev3 Quassy, I had an unstructured week of training. That may sound like a good thing—an opportunity to stay active without getting too serious, to reset before the long months of training ahead. I may have misinterpreted “unstructured” to mean “unactive” or, more specifically, indulging in a Better Call Saul marathon while catching up on Oreo ice cream.

Possibly not what was intended in the plan.

Get preoccupied with another big-scary-important thing. I was scheduled to speak at a tech conference a couple weeks before the race. With over three months to prepare, I naturally waited to nail down my presentation until the last two weeks before the conference. Lucky for me, the talk went really well—it’s about handling adversity—but my training suffered.

As I can now share from experience, the hours in needed to prepare for a tech talk ended up being the same hours I may have otherwise reserved for triathlon training or sleeping.

Finally, eat Chinese food about a week before the race. I have nothing against Chinese per se, but on this particular occasion, I managed to consume tainted Chinese food and was subsequently introduced to a black plague of gastrointestinal hellfire. I spent the entire July 4th long weekend losing my dignity. Needless to say, I was out of commission up until just three days before the race, when I was able to get back on my bike for a short warmup ride.

What I got right this month

1. I didn’t freak out.
2. I started working with a coach.

Since last October, when I returned to triathlon training, I’ve been what is described (in the biz) as a “self-coached athlete”. Have you tried coaching yourself in anything? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The stars aligned in June though, and after Quassy, I joined up with Coach Robbie Bruce of Team C26 and the Crushing Iron podcast.

As I’ve mentioned before, I discovered the Crushing Iron guys, Robbie and Mike, earlier this season while researching IM Wisconsin. They both raced IMOO last year and did a course breakdown on one of their early podcasts. I enjoyed their banter so much I started listening to the rest of their podcasts, connected with them over email, and have even appeared as a guest on their show back in April.

Now, I finally have an experienced guide overseeing my training regimen. As a widowed single father in a new city, it helps to have a new friend too. Though we’ve only been working together for a short time, he’s already guided me through a few challenging weeks and has me excited about the build up to Wisconsin.

Given the circumstances, we came up with a simple plan for Williamsburg:

Bike conservative, then run like hell

That was all there was to it. Sure, there are a lot of logistics to the plan, like when and what to eat and drink before and during the race, that I’m sun-screened and lubricated, and that I have all the right equipment (running shoes, bike shoes, baby powder (my ingenious sock replacement), gels, bike bottles, bike helmet, race bib, race belt, timing chip, GPS watch, bike computer, spare tubes, CO2 cartridges, etc.) I’ve done enough triathlons to know what I need and how to bring it all together. I’ve also come to expect if something can go wrong it will, so I’ve learned to be ready to improvise.

So, aside from all that, it was a simple plan. We all know how that turns out.

Chasing numbers

So as race weekend finally arrived, I wasn’t feeling great about my fitness. While I was brimming with excitement for Quassy, I mostly felt tired thinking about Williamsburg. Knowing it’d be a hot race didn’t help. I don’t run well in the heat. Run like hell, more like running in hell, amirite? I also slept really well the night of the race—another indication I was really tired as I’m usually too amp’ed—and almost slept through my alarm. Ugh. I even thought to myself, Maybe I’m not up for this today.

So it came as a great surprise, as I got on my bike coming out of T1, to discover I had legs. I’ve done enough races to know what that energy is supposed to feel like. As Robbie says, “it’s better to be undertrained than overtrained.” As I pedaled up the Route 5 bridge across the Chickahominy coming out of transition, I knew my race was on.

Though I hadn’t previewed the bike course, I knew it was flat. As a former New Yorker, and having done most of my triathlons in the Northeast, I don’t know much about flat. The Quassy bike course, for example, has an elevation gain of nearly 4000 ft. Early reports indicated Williamsburg would be a pancake.

That doesn’t necessarily mean easy—most of us are always going as hard as we can sustain—but it would mean faster if I could hit my numbers. And those numbers, per Robbie’s prescription, were in Watts. He gave me a target and I just hammered on, trying to match that number for 56 miles. The result? I set a 70.3 bike split personal best in 2:31:50. But I was most proud of the fact that I came within 1 Watt of the average normalized power target we set. That means I trusted my body to hold up and stayed disciplined by not getting caught up in racing others.

But the run loomed. To understand why it worried me, we have to go back to August, 2014 when I raced Timberman 70.3. This was a comparably hot and humid race up in New Hampshire. I went into that race hoping to break 5 hours for a half-Ironman for the first time. After setting a blistering pace on the bike course, I completely fell apart on the run, stumbling through the first eight miles until I finally found the courage to finish with dignity. It was my worst HIM run. That performance was haunting me as I was coming out of T2.

According to Dark Sky, the temperature around run time was approaching 85ºF. It’s scary to imagine how much hotter it could have been. My legs felt pretty tight coming off the bike, andI wouldn’t know if I’d be running or hobbling for several minutes while my hip flexors and hamstrings adjusted to new stress.

Yet again, I was surprised when my legs kicked into gear on my way up the bridge back out onto Route 5. I knew I didn’t have the same fitness that carried me to personal best 70.3 run at Quassy, but I could tell I wouldn’t fold like I did years ago at Timberman. It was tough under the hot sun, but I had one trick up my sleeve to beat the heat:

I carried a ziploc bag with my nutrition and filled it with ice at every aid station. As the ice melted in my hands, I was able to pour water on my head throughout the run and was able to keep the engine from overheating for the most part.

As I made made the turn at the halfway point, heading out for the second loop, I peeked at the time and started doing the mental math. If I kept up my 8:30 pace, I would break 5 hours for the first time with a few minutes to spare. Timberman redemption. If.

I latched on to another runner who had just run past me and looked pretty strong. I was able to stay with him all the way to the final out-and-back turn. With three miles to go, I fell back. The last mile and half still really hurt, back over the bridge one last time and without any cover from the sun. I couldn’t look at my watch. I wanted it. Just. keep. going.

Finally, the end was in sight. The female champion passed me in the final 100 yards before the finish line. In the finishing tent, there was a lot of celebrating for her—rightfully so!—but all the volunteers surrounded her while I was nearly collapsing a few feet away. It took a minute or two before I got some assistance.

Okay, it wasn’t quite Vince-Vaughn-in-True-Detective bad, but it felt like stepping into a support vacuum for a brief moment (To be clear, I am very grateful to all the volunteers who took time out of their weekend, braved the heat, and helped a bunch of masochists throughout the race). In the announcer’s excitement to congratulate the female champion, my name wasn’t called out as I crossed the finish line either.

Right then, I acknowledged a sad metaphor for Jen’s absence. She has been there for me at the finish line of so many races. When I’ve struggled most, I could always fall back on her support and re-energize with gratitude for having her in my life. Now, she’s only there in spirit and I deeply miss her presence. This was a painful reminder of the void she has left behind. But as I’ve been learning to do, once I acknowledged the hurt, I shifted my perspective back to the positive again.

And I finally looked at my watch. It read 4:57:14.

Onward

Despite the anticlimactic finish, I perked right back up with post-race barbecue and beer. Adam, one of the DC Tri all stars, introduced himself and told me I had a great race. My family and coach were quick to check-in and congratulate me from afar. Coach even gave a shoutout on the podcast.

I learned a lot about myself in this race and in the buildup. I’ve come a long way in my training. I can bike smart. I can run in the heat. I remembered I’m doing this for fun; that it is a great privilege to be able to participate in this sport. I do triathlon to find out just how far I can push myself and where my potential lies; that it’s not really about the time posted next to my name in the race results.

I have renewed confidence heading into the homestretch to Wisconsin. Next weekend, I’m off to Nashville for my first-ever triathlon camp with coach and the C26 team and looking forward to the challenge. My longest ride of the year is 63 miles… something tells me I’m going to have to step it up a notch.

For the nerds, here are links to my swim, bike, and run data for Rev3 Williamsburg. I’m doing Ironman Wisconsin on September 10, 2017. Follow me on my triathlon journey here.

Hot Wheels: Rev3 Williamsburg was originally published in Out and Back on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.