In case you’re a subscriber who gets these blog posts by email or simply have this page, not my web site landing page, bookmarked, you should probably know that a couple days ago the new and improved BrandonSneed.com went live.

Click here or click the image above to check it out.

We’re all pretty pumped about it. Bookmark it, make yourself at home there. There are still a few kinks to iron out here and there but on the whole, we’re stoked about the way it’s come out.

Thanks for reading, seriously — it means a lot me as a writer, period, but especially as such a young one working to make things happen for myself. Seeing the page views rise and readership increase definitely helps me realize I’ve got some good things moving, and it means the world that you all value my words enough to spend your time reading them. I say that humbly and with immense gratitude. I hope you’ll be around for a long time.

Best,

Brandon

When we last left me, I was hurting after a 2,000-yard swim followed by a full sprint brick workout. Which basically means I went through my Tuesday morning swim workout then, in the spirit of ambition, partook in an 11-mile bike ride followed by a 5K run, the distances we’ll be biking and running in my first triathlon next Sunday.

Right. Next Sunday. Four months of grueling training, of getting up at 5:30 a.m., of dressing by flashlight so as not to wake the wife …. It all comes down to this.

Wait. Maybe I should have saved that sentence for next weekend.

Anyway, I skipped running Wednesday morning. Of course I did. I’d just finished a friggin’ triathlon. (I feel like I’ve typed that before.) Then Thursday we did the same thing all over again. To make things even better, we swam 300 yards last during the pool workout (the distance we’ll swim next Sunday). I was fairly pleased with my time of 5:23, although I wasn’t happy with how tense I was all workout. Not sure why. Oh well. Things happen. I think I’d just put a bit too high of expectations on myself and was starting to stress because I wasn’t sure I could actually meet said expectations, so I’m now shedding them.

On Tuesday I wrote that my goal was to bike the 11.5 miles in 30 minutes or so then run the 5K in 22-23 minutes. I think that’s what I wrote. If it’s not, then I lied, and that’s really what I wanted to do. Combined with a 5:00 to 5:30 swim, that puts me finishing in just under an hour, long as I am quick through the transitions.

I’m not so sure about that now. It took us 29 minutes to run the 5K yesterday, which is because we were just taking it easy and getting it done. I was fine with that. Plus my foot starting hurting again, which is bad. I really should stretch more. That’s all it is. I stretch, no pain. I don’t stretch, pain. What’s my deal? Just stretch, right?

That was after riding the 11 miles in 35 minutes.

I feel like my strongest leg will be the bike. As of right now, my plan – and this is a very flexible plan because what plan can a first-time triathlete really have aside from finishing the friggin’ race? – is to swim hard but focus on using that as a good warmup, then ride as hard as I can and hopefully gain as much time and ground on others as possible. Then I’ll just have to gut my way through the 5K. I already expected it being the worst part since I hate running, but if I’m going all-out for the bike, then yeah, my legs might not be in 7:30-pace mile shape like I originally planned.

I should try to get a good run in this weekend, too, then bust my tail throughout the week if I want to finish on Sunday in under an hour. It’ll be tough. I really don’t know how that’s going to work out. But goals are good, and my goal is to finish my first sprint triathlon in an hour. I’ll be happy with an hour and five minutes. I’m honestly expecting an hour and 10 minutes or so. But my goal is one hour.

Things are going pretty well. What can I say? This group’s making me a stud like them.

Except for yesterday. Yesterday was pretty brutal. Yesterday was my first full sprint distance brick workout. We basically did a sprint triathlon, including our normal hour-long pool workout before riding 11 miles on the bike and then running a 5K.

That. Was. Hard.

We rode the 11 miles in about 35 minutes, battling ridiculous headwinds seemingly everywhere we turned. Then we took about five minutes transitioning — about four minutes longer than my goal for transitions in an actual sprint triathlon — then ran the 5K. Never in my life have I run on legs so wobbly. I stayed with my little group for about a mile, maybe a mile and a half, then it was over. The rest of the run was me trying not to walk. I was actually having some pretty profound thoughts during that little torture session, but I’ll reserve those for my private journal for now. I think they may have just been the result of fatigue-induced hysteria, which isn’t altogether different from being drunk.

Anyway, I finished and I didn’t walk and I even tried to catch the group I’d left with. Key word there, obviously, being “tried.” It took them about between 23-24 minutes and I finished about two or three minutes behind them, putting my 5K time around 25-26 minutes.

My goal for next Sunday’s sprint is to ride the bike course in less than 35 minutes and run the 5K in less than 24 minutes. Since I’ll only be swimming 300 yards beforehand, not 2,000, I’m hoping it’ll be easier than it felt yesterday.

The good news is that I’m doing it all over again. (The bad news: I didn’t go run this morning. You kidding me? I’m not going to one of Leanne’s track workouts the day after doing a friggin’ triathon. I’m a triathlete now, but not that good yet.)

BLOG UPDATES:

Some of you may have noticed some weird things happening around brandonsneed.com lately. That’s because we’re in the process of revamping my web site and basically rebranding me as a writer/editor/photographer. I’ve developed a new vision for my blog content, and I’m really excited about the new direction I’ll be taking things soon. It’s going to be really, really cool, and I’m not just saying that because it’s my blog. The design will be great because Katie is helping me and she’s an amazing graphic artist, and I’m going to be doing it all through Squarespace instead of WordPress because Squarespace is way more flexible and easier to use, in my opinion. It also costs a little more and demands a bit more attention to detail, which is good because that’s only going to make me that much more driven to produce quality content.

And the content will be quality. We won’t be having any more of my little ramble sessions or anything like that. I’m getting an editor or two and everything.

I’ll fill you all in more about all that soon. Stay tuned and tell your friends….good things are coming to brandonsneed.com.

Thanks as always, you all rock for hanging out around here.

Peace.

We had two crazy tri-clubbers race yesterday and today in two different triathlons this weekend.  They both podium finished!!! We can be so proud of them.  Bruce Brawley came in first in Smithfield, Va for the first time in his age group!  Way to go Bruce and can’t wait to see you back at the track to congratulate you!  Brian Campbell finished second at the Cool Breeze in Huntersville in his age group, and can you believe he competed after a morning of bouts with sickness? That is truly amazing – most athletes would have just hung up their shoes and gone back to bed! Both of them are inspiring to me – join with me in congratulating them in such difficult efforts this weekend and representing us so well!!  Here are their amazing results:

BRUCE BRAWLEY: 300m swim:  5:24   10 mile bike: 28:00   5K: 21:30      Total: 57:03
BRIAN CAMPBELL: 250 yd. swim: 4:27   20K bile: 36:41 5K Run:22:45    Total : 1:05:28

Congrats, guys.

So you can probably understand why, on Wednesday after my run, I started freaking out in my mind a little bit when my foot started hurting.

OK, I should clarify — I have a pretty high pain threshhold. My foot’s hurt before in the past couple months. I’ve had a couple cases of plantar fascitis fasciitis, which I still don’t completely understand or know how to spell. Something to do with a band in my foot connected to my calf getting all stretched out or something. Basically, if I stretch better, it won’t hurt. But I’ve run through that. It was no big deal.

This felt like something completely different though. It felt a lot deeper, it started in my heel, not the middle of the foot like my others, and just throbbed. The other times it hasn’t throbbed like that, not just when I stand up to walk to the kitchen. I was seriously worried I had a stress fracture, and a stress fracture at this point in the training, with my first triathlon two weeks away, would be catastrophic to me. I’m finally feeling strong. I feel like I’ll not only survive the triathlon; I’ll be competitive.

Then….stress fracture?

I had a physician’s assistant I know look at it, but there’s only so much you can tell by looking at someone’s foot. He said what anyone else would have said. Ice hit. Take some Advil. Stay off it as much as possible.

Of course, I didn’t ice it, I definitely didn’t take some Advil, and I went swimming the next morning. Then I went running this morning.

I’m a horrible patient.

I hate icing things. I don’t know why. I just do.

I hate taking Advil. I mean, for headaches and stuff, sure. But I feel like if I take an Advil for my foot just to stop it from hurting, then I walk around, I’ll probably end up hurting it more. I know — I’m a know-it-all questioning PAs. Who’s a genius? This guy.

The swimming actually didn’t bother it much. I mean, I felt it every once in awhile, but only every once in awhile. Then I decided to go running this morning, which may have been a horrible mistake. I can barely walk now. And I’m supposed to ride the WAC bike course and run the 5K course out there tomorrow so I can get to know the course some. Wee, that’ll be fun.

So I’m babbling on about my foot to LeAnne — actually, I babbled on to her about it yesterday in an email, too — and she totally set my mind at ease. “It’s just a classic case of plantar fasciitis,” she said. “Quit worrying about it.” She told me to stretch it out more than I do. I really don’t stretch enough. And she said it’s actually pretty common for this thing to start in heels. I got the feeling it was weird my others had been more in the middle of my foot.

So anyway, that’s what’s going on. Sorry if this isn’t awesomely written — I’m a little distracted and eager to start working on some other writing projects, plus I don’t have a ton of time today. Thanks for stopping by, though, as always!

As we finished today’s workout

Her face glowed a little bit and she grinned a lot and you could tell she was pretty giddy. We were doing speed work, running laps and timing ourselves on it. Her times were in the 1:35 (one minute thirty-five seconds) range, way down from the 1:55 times she was putting up a couple weeks ago.

“Youth,” said Brian Campbell.

“Youth,” agreed Ben Bowie. He held up his fingers a half an inch apart. “They can do this much work” — then he spread his hands a couple feet apart — “And get this much progress. We do this much work” — his hands are still two feet apart….then he pinches his fingers together again — “And we get this much progress.”

I’m way less external so I didn’t really emanate all the happiness she was, but dude, I felt it. It was an awesome morning, which is pretty weird and cool because I usually really hate run mornings.

You know, nearly three months in, you’d think I’d have it figured out by now. As hard as it is to wake up, it’s that worth it when the workout’s finished. You really would think that would have clicked by now. I mean, really.

I slept until the last possible minute again, getting out of bed around 5:50 for a 6 a.m. workout. Well, I slept until my alarm went off at 5:30 then hit the snooze three times. Katie still doesn’t appreciate that, but she got a new job and she has to be in at 7 a.m. anyway, so it’s good for her. As it works out, that’s been good for me too. We’re going to bed by 10, 10:30 now. It’s like we’re old people.

No offense, old people. But for us young whippersnappers, 10 p.m. is way early. And Sunday night, we were actually in bed by 9:30. I swear, it’s like we’re….30!

OK, enough with the lame jokes about being young and spry.

It really was too bad our faithful running coach, LeAnne, was sick this morning. She missed some people running really fast. It would have made her proud.

She texted all of us with our assignment (at 1:30 a.m., I might add, the crazy person): 4×400 at a 5K pace, then 4×400 five seconds faster, then 2×400 sprints, with a 200-yard rest between them all. In other words, we run four individual laps at the pace we’d run a 5K, resting for half a lap between each lap. Same deal for four more laps, only faster. Then we sprint a couple laps to end the day.

I’ve begun considering myself more of a short-distance speed guy. Not that I’d win any 100-yard sprint competitions, but I can roll for a lap or two. Distance-wise, I like running three to four miles. But I’m so not a fan of half-marathon or marathon-length runs.

So I always expect short distance days to go well. I didn’t expect today to go as well as it did.

I paced with a guy named Ian, who can absolutely fly. (Cool side note: the WAC will be his first triathlon, too.)

(Other side note: Friday is the last day to change our swim times for the WAC tri, so remind me to do that after I test my 100-yard swim time tomorrow.)

Anyway, Ian and I flew. Our 5K pace was so not a 5K pace. I think we ran those laps in around 1:30. If I tried running a 5K at that pace I’d be gassed halfway through.

Then we somehow beat that for the next set, rolling in around 1:20-1:25. It was crazy to me how strong I felt. Yeah, about halfway through the workout my legs started getting rubbery for the laps’ last 100 yards or so, but I never really wanted to quit. I felt like a machine, almost, just pumping and pumping. I could accelerate whenever I wanted to, but I was actually pacing myself, and pacing myself fast. (You probably remember I’ve had problems pacing myself. I get impatient. I want to be done, like, an hour ago. So I run too fast then burn out too fast then start making lame excuses why I can’t keep running too fast.)

But today, there were no lame excuses. I was a little lame for not running my last sprint, but I didn’t care, because of how I ran my first sprint.

I thought I’d started out too fast. Then I felt my left shoe come untied. In the past, those two things would have been reasons enough for me to slow up and let Ian pass me and just dog it for the lap. Not today, though. I remember back in my baseball days getting that feeling of “being in the zone.” That’s sort of how I felt today. Part of me doesn’t want to talk it up too much because in my mind, it’s just running.

(Running/swimming/biking have always felt like just preparation for sports for me. That’s always how we conditioned for baseball, with one of those three. It preceded the sport; it wasn’t the sport; thus it didn’t truly matter, at least not to me. I did well enough to please the coach and get something out of it, but it was never something I focused too much on. Now, though, I’m starting to embrace it as a sport, as something competitive to do. I’ve quit fighting the feeling that this is just what unathletic nerds do. I know, it’s horrible, but I’ve had that feeling a few times. How crappy of a person am I? Except I am learning and growing, and yeah, I’m really embracing it. That’s also making it way more fun. And it’s way better than doing nothing but sitting on the couch eating Crunch bars and watching sports and remembering when I was good at them. Now I’m getting good at something else. It’s good to get good at things. It’s healthy. It grows you up, and growing is the only way to live life.)

Anyway, sorry about that uber-long Sneedthetical (a Sneed parenthical ramble), but some thoughts and feelings apparently needed to get out there.

(Don’t get me wrong, I still love sports. Joining a softball league, actually. Droppin’ bombs, yayuh. Sorry, done…)

Anywayyy, running … my last sprint was phenomenal, at least for me, and I feel like with another workout or two, I could beat it. I beat Ian. Only by a couple steps, but I beat him. (So what if he beat my time by four seconds the next lap?) I finished that lap in 1:12. That’s one minute, 12 seconds. That’s unbelievable compared to where I was back in January. Back in January I was sucking wind half a lap into the runs. It took me 8:30 to run a mile.

Now laps and miles are just challenges, just something to be run faster and faster and faster.

Sorry for the crazy long post this morning. It was just that good of a morning. Even if I didn’t run my last sprint and someone called me a lazy ass. Darn right, I was a lazy ass. Darn right, I skipped my last lap. I felt that good. Also, I felt that tired.

I know that a week from now – heck, a day from now, probably – I’ll be wanting to beat that. I won’t feel this good about that because heck, it’s already been accomplished.

But this morning, I feel that good.

Wrote about the dedication I’m coming to see in this group and the value I’m coming to see in such dedication. It sounds dramatic, and maybe it is, although I don’t feel dramatic about it — but this has, in a way, changed my life, training for a triathlon.

What’s phenomenally ironic is how the day a column runs about how I’m learning the value of dedication I sleep in. I blame pain. My neck’s been hurting since last Friday and I’m not sure why. Still does. I thought maybe staying out of the pool would help. Not sure if it did – it doesn’t hurt as much.

I’ll still probably go for a ride or run later today. It’s a little chilly, but it’s beautiful outside and I have a little spare time in my schedule.

I’m spending most of the day writing about Scott Johnson for a magazine. If you google “Scott Johnson + cystic fibrosis + Ironman“, you’ll find out who he is pretty quickly. Yeah, he is that guy in all those articles and on all those TV shows. His story probably won’t run until the summer, but I’m feeling a blog or two coming on about him. So stay tuned, my faithful readers.

Friday — Day 69 — was awesome. I mentioned it in the column, but it can’t hurt to bring it up here. We ran 6.2 miles in 59 minutes, 36 seconds. Then I rode about 10 miles with Big Hank later that morning while he talked to me about life insurance. This weekend I let my body recover some, then on Monday — Day 72 — killed it for an hour in spin class. I can’t believe how good I’m feeling. I can’t wait to see how this race on April 11 goes.

Forget the brackets. Forget them all.

My brackets were ruined by day one, like most people’s. Day two gave me a little hope; like most people, I got more right. But now I don’t care anymore. No. 9 Northern Iowa just beat No. 1 Kansas – as in, the overwhelming favorite to win the national championship – by two points. They could have won by one; they could have won by twenty. Most nights, they would have lost by twenty. But tonight, they won by two.

Never will anybody truly believe that No Iowa is better than Kansas. Have you looked at this team? They’ve got Curly and a red-headed Wolverine on the bench. They have four white guys on the floor against….Kansas. They’ve got guys pulling threes with 25 seconds left and the lead. None of that should be construed as insult – it’s just….it’s Kansas. You don’t expect redheaded four white guys to beat the Bill Self-coached monsters that are the Jayhawks.

As I type this it’s 67-64 No Iowa with 6.2 seconds left. Kansas just called a timeout. And between a serious deprivation of sleep and a Michelob Ultra or two, I’m feeling inspired. It’s been a long time since sports have inspired me. I mean, I’m writing a book about a Harlem Globetrotter and he lived on of the most inspiring and unbelievable stories one could ever live. So that inspires me some. But there’s something draining about engrossing yourself in someone else’s life, too. So yeah, I don’t find a ton of inspiration in sports these days. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m all old and grown up now, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a phase.

But this, this bracket-destroying start to the NCAA tournament, has reminded me why sports remain inspiring.

It’s become unbelievably commercialized, the NCAA tournament. It’s a bittersweet affair, but like with most things in life, it has its pros and cons. On one hand, it’s a little gross, the idea of rich people getting richer by capitalizing on the appeal that these young, passionate players still have to people. People love drama, and – Kansas just lost 69-67, and people are crying, both in joy and in agony – there’s nothing more dramatic than young men’s dreams on the line. That’s why the camera stays on devastated Kansas senior Mario Little. Who videos a 22-year-old in tears? Television people do. It’s dramatic, and drama draws ratings.

But to us – and by “us” I do mean college athletes; for some reason something in my heart still feels somewhat connected, and I suppose I should, because I just graduated a year ago and still some days quite ache for the game – this is more than ratings. So much more. Maybe the white collars capitalize on our passion, but passion and drive are our currency. We want money, yeah, and we’d like to make it playing this game, and some of us had our education funded by this game, but more than that, we just want to win.

Forget the brackets. I’m inspired again. It’s painful to me, Kansas’ tremendous tumble. The falling of the mighty is never wholly inspiring, no matter who does the slaying. The mighty are the mighty; this is why we love them.

Meanwhile, now BYU is leading Kansas State 10-0 and Wake Forest leads Kentucky 4-0.

Forget the bracks. Bring on the madness. This is March. This, I now remember, is why I love sports.

UPDATE (3/20/2010 at 10:16 p.m.):

In retrospect – that beautiful thing that helps us see things oh so clearly – I see that I am, surprise surprise, wrong. It’s like I’m human or something.

A sport has inspired me much lately. Triathlon. I almost offended myself, reading back over that blog. So now I’m explaining some things….to myself, apparently.

For the past 70 days or so I’ve been training for a triathlon with some truly inspiring people. Plus, just this past week, I interviewed a triathlete who became the first person ever to compete in, then complete, an Ironman after a double lung transplant. I’d begun writing a blog about him. He’d inspired me.

So when I say that sports have not inspired me in awhile, I was quite wrong. Well, perhaps not wrong, but definitely inaccurate. Which I guess is the same thing as wrong, after all.

Triathlon just seems different to me. Something about it feels pure. Something about it is quietly and subtly and inherently yet so undeniably evocative. I’ve developed such an appreciation for triathletes – for all competitive endurance athletes, really – over the past few months, and it’s because I have been compelled to become a better competitive endurance athlete myself because of them.

So I’ve been inspired. Only in different ways by different people. The sports are so different, triathlon and basketball, but they are, technically sports, after all, right?

I might have just fallen in love with sports all over again.

Getting out of bed has become a win-some-lose-some fight every morning now, especially since we’ve jumped forward that hour. The extra daylight is great. It’s nice not having the sun go down before 6 p.m. But now it’s dark outside again. I’m literally done with a workout before dawn. That’s begun wearing on me a little bit. There was just something about walking out into sunlight that made the workouts worth it, or at least easier to move past.

This morning we swam, and it was a day with Lance, and as you know by now — unless you’re one of my new readers — is that Lance wears us slam out. We swam 2,500 yards today. I swam 2,400 and my triceps and shoulders are as sore now as they’ve ever been after a swim. He worked us good.

During the drills and whatnot I started getting really frustrated that I was falling behind. I was leading our lane most of the morning and every time I took a breath, I’d check where the leaders of the other two lanes were. I could usually stay with them for about a length, then they’d smoke me on the turn and end up finishing anywhere from a couple strokes to a dozen yards in front of me. I hate that.

But then I found that perspective: as I was making a turn into the second half of a lap and again felt that frustration rise as I watched people take off well ahead of me, I thought, Two months ago I couldn’t make it 1,000 yards without wanting to throw up. Two months ago I was choking on water and gassing out after two laps and about as worthless as a triathlete gets. Heck, I was no triathlete then. I was a guy in a pool wearing boardshorts and goggles trying to swim with triathletes. Now I’m trying to beat the best in the group. Who gets frustrated when they fall behind people better than them? We can’t follow people we’re not behind, anyway, and who wouldn’t want to follow someone better than them? I know. It’s different. I’m swimming. But something inside me pushes me constantly to get better.

Yeah. This is one addicting sport, triathlon.

My second perspective came as I was walking outside and cold and wishing the sun was further up. I thought, It’s literally the crack of dawn and I’ve already busted my ass for an hour in a pool. Two months ago I was sitting around on a coach wearing running shoes and wishing I could make myself get back into shape. Two days ago Katie told me my stomach’s flatter than she’s ever seen it, and she’s known me for 12 years.

That’s worth a little pain, a little less sleep, a little money. Totally worth it.

There’s such value in reflection, which is why I try to journal consistently. I have many, many more things that have changed over the past couple of months of training. I’ll work on putting those together for later blogs. Here are a few….

The Azalea sprint triathlon came and went this weekend and I didn’t participate, though as I twice turned onto Cardinal in my car as triathletes on bikes did the same, I began wishing I had.

It’s been just over two months since I began this saga. Less than one month remains until my first triathlon, the Wilmington Athletic Club sprint. As I wished I was racing on Saturday and Sunday, I found myself also reflecting on things.

I’m sitting here drinking green tea instead of coffee during pauses in my writing, one of many things that have changed in the past two months.

I’ve acquired quite the knack for dressing in the dark, only occasionally with the help of light from my iPod or phone or a flashlight. And I almost always put everything on right side out.

Even though I get up at 5:30 a.m. (most mornings) I still can’t quite make myself go to sleep before 10 p.m. I really wish I could. That would probably keep me from hitting the snooze four times and nearly sleeping every workout.

Hard as it feels to get out of bed that early, I’ve fallen in love with mornings. As my grandfather says, mornings are beautiful, they just come too early. To that I can now add, as I’ve learned, that some of the most rewarding things in life are the things for which we must sometimes work hardest. And make no mistake: getting out of bed at 5:30 a.m. when it’s 30 degrees outside is hard work.

Amazingly, though, Katie, my wife, hasn’t sent me to sleep on the futon in the living room yet. Which is why learning to dress in the dark can be useful.

In training, I’ve gone from swimming in board shorts and biking in t-shirts to, like during this morning’s spin class, literally wearing nothing but spandex. That’s only become possible because I’ve gone from a cocksure ex-college athlete to a humble, respecting triathlete.

Speaking of respect, I’ve learned so much about not just triathlons and training and nutrition—I’ve learned about life. I’m the youngest in this group by, at my best guess, about seven years. Members I consider friends are 20 to 30 years older than I. There’s so much to be learned from those a generation older. Their generation made our generation possible.

And literally, they made my training possible. I ride a 52-year-old’s bike. I’m in this club because of him and a 41-year-old. I swim alongside an 80-year-old. That used to sound so old to me. By now you know me well enough not to take that in offense—it’s simply how I thought as a 22-year-old. Twenty-two-year-olds never turn 41 or 52 or 80, not in their minds.

In this weekend’s triathlon, that 52-year-old won his age group and that 41-year-old won hers. I don’t think I’ll win mine when I race on April 11, but they make me want to. Everything about this group makes me want to.