28 on the 28th

Yesterday, December 28th, was my 28th birthday.  You always wish that you have a good day on your birthday.  It was.  Here is why:

Functional Threshold Power on Bike

A year ago Jerom Thurston told me on Facebook that on my birthday I was supposed to run the number miles I was turning that day (27).  It was unrealistic at the time, but it left an impression.  I thought that it would be realistic this year to run 28 miles on the 28th of December for my 28th birthday.  It might actually fit into my training plan well because it would be 4 months out from my Ironman and since I’ve never run a marathon, and don’t plan to run more than about 20 miles as my longest run leading up to the race, then it would be cool to run a slow 28 miles that day.

That wouldn’t happen however.  Late in October I sustained a minor injury in my foot that kept me from running for most of November.  If I tried to get up to 28 miles by the end of December I’d probably injury myself again.  The long run was replaced by my monthly FTP (Functional Threshold Power) test.  This is an all out 2×20 minute test done on the bike.  You can read more about it on one of my previous posts: Fatigue is Voluntary.

Even though this test is absolutely painful I looked forward to seeing my progress.  Because of the foot injury I did not do this test at the end of November.  I was hoping for about an increase in 5 watts per month.  For a lot of people that is a very good improvement.  My FTP at the end of October was 235, so I was looking to get up near 245.  After the two 20 minutes sessions of incredible suffering (with an easy 5 minute spin in between), I had set my new record – 250 watts for the first session and 249 for the second!  To share with you how intense this workout is, my second 20 minute set I averaged a heart rate of 180 bpm (finishing somewhere around 194 bpm).  Besides just increasing my FTP I also had another amazing improvement.  My last test of 235 watts was an average from a 240 watt session and a 230 watt session.  The decrease between the sessions was 10 watts, this time it was only 1 watt!

I’m looking forward to even more improvement in the near future!

Registered for Ironman St George

Later in the day I finally took it upon myself to get registered for the main event that I’m training for.  $630!!!  Wow, that is the most expensive race I’ve ever registered for.  I have until the beginning of February to get some more sponsors so that I can pay back my credit card.  Why then should I register now?  Because, by registering for the event by the end of the year I will be entered in a sweepstakes for participants to win free airfare for two to the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii – just what I’m going to need.

Swim Time Trial

My great birthday must have carried over a bit into today because I had an a great 1000 meter time trial at 5:30am.  Each month I do this test as well and my times have been dropping steadily.  Today it dropped from last month’s 15:00 to 14:49!

Fishbowl Paid Back Zion’s

The final great event from the day was that the company that I work for, Fishbowl Inventory, paid back a million dollar loan from Zion’s Bank.  If you want all of the details you can read an article about it HERE.  It is really cool though.  Fishbowl’s majority owner (and silent owner) wanted his money out of the company at the end of last year.  We were forced into looking for potential investors, but worried that our culture would be slaughtered if that happened.  Through some miracles we were able to obtain a loan from Zion’s Bank.  The wonderful thing about this is that we would be buying back our own company.  A large portion of the company will be given as stock to the employees.  What company does that for their employees!

The loan was established in May of this year.  The loan had six-months of no interest and would be paid off over seven years.  We worked extra hard though so that today, when the initial principal payment was due, we would pay back the entire loan!  It was such a big deal that we had news paper reporters here and KSL here.  You can actually see the story on KSL tonight at 6pm (short version) and at 10 pm (long version).  It’s a cool example of getting out of debt early when you have the means to.

Update: Here is the KSL Video.