Bringing home the baby!!

Sorry in advance to any and all of the woman who read this blog with my inference!! For the record, as it relates to evolution; the "big guy in the sky" got it right when he selected woman to bring new life into the world. If it were up to us men, I’m not so sure the human species would have survived/advanced?!!

Ok, where is this guy going with this you may ask? Well, here it goes.

When it comes to competing in an Ironman, and actually finishing one in fewer than 11 hours, it’s the male equivalence of delivering a baby. Sorry ladies but please hear me out and see below. (By the way, this picture is of our son Mark less than an hour into this world).

1) IM (Ironman) even to get into these races now takes over a year of planning.
2) They cost as much if not more than having a baby.
3) After the baby (IM finish is delivered) they make you pay for the next baby even before you can enjoy the one staring you in the face.
4) We lay in bed at night wondering what it’s going to look like.
5) The preparation talks back to us at all hours of the night.
6) We try to come up with a suitable name, but “this effn hurts” or names like that doesn’t go over well enough in the school yard.
7) Everyone around us could care less about it.
8) We carry our finish line photo in our wallet.
9) We have to eat well, avoid booze and our bodies are out of sorts and disfigured.
10) The list of formulas and drinks and supplements surpasses even your best night time feeding
11) We go for check-ups even more than having a difficult pregnancy.
12) Our coach (doctor) is on speed dial and comments on how much we weigh, what color is our pee and how much rest we get.
13) We spend all our free time congregating with other pregnant men and read magazines to buy faster strollers.

Well, it’s just a short list and I’d love to see you add to it.


We are just 6 short days from the big dance called Lake Placid. I so love this course because I feel it suits my biking skills better than most. Training and health are as good as they have ever been. Swim is better, bike watts are about 30 watts higher and I have a solid base for the run with my start and stop of Atacama training. For just this Ironman protocol not including the Boston Marathon, Nubble Light and Atacama preparation I’ve logged 428 hour of training. I’ve completed almost every ride on my trainer where I wanted to see if I could control the workout and keep the intensity as high as possible and time constrained. I’m ready!

The long and crazy odds for Kona are something like this: 100,000 IM athletes, 1500 slots available out of all the races throughout the world. 1.5% chance, or 1 in 66. Less than 1/10 of 1% of the human population will ever even run a marathon.  Add IM onto that and you get the picture!

I’ve asked a couple of friends to take over my twitter account since they will be on course. Look to follow Face book or Twitter if you would like updates. Also, here is the Lake Placid real-time tracking.

My bib number is 2091

scribb@twitter.com
http://ironmanlakeplacid.com/
www.ironman.com
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1408468181

Getting it all together and racing for purpose for Alina

Recently my friend Alina passed away unexpectedly at the age of 34. When this all started Alina was one of, if not the first to reach out to me to offer praise, encouragement and assistance. Alina was an amazing athlete who crushed her first Ironman in and around 10:15. She will be missed, but not forgotten!

It seemed like every race I had Alina would send me a message such as;  "get it, rip it, take it deep" or you name it.

I plan to talk more about Alina after talking with her family. You can read her race report and blog to me a long while back. One of the many, many great things about the endurance community is the level of support in and off the course. Alina’s friends have put on ride in her memory.

http://ironmanforcancer.blogspot.com/2009/01/ironman-florida-it-all-came-true-alina.html

I dedicate my next races to Alina’s memory and to her family. Please consider donating to Alina’s charity in her memory here:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/alina-farinas-friends-family-celebrate-life-of-triathlete-1577003.html

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/palmbeachpost/obituary.aspx?n=alina-maria-farinas&pid=152029285&fhid=5127#.TfyqVrDzSto;facebook

Since Alina passed I’ve been able to use her encouragement as added fuel to push harder and more focused than ever.  One of my daily affirmations is, “someone, somewhere is in a hospital bed right now begging for the opportunity you have right now; step into your moment” This sadly is so true in memory of Alina.

This weekend I take on the Nubble Lighthouse Challenge as prep for My July 24, 2001 Ironman. This race last year almost got me with getting lost in the ocean and my legs shutting down. Time to face it again as it’s been in my head all year!!!

http://www.nubblelightchallenge.com/

The July Push

It’s been too long since my last blog. To be candid, there has been so much living going on that I’ve found it difficult to take pause and write any of this stuff down. It’s all good, so here we go!!!

The past few weeks have been all out, head down and focused. (Well, it’s always that way, but to be candid I was getting a little tired tweeting and blogging about my day). Some, I’m sure were/are getting annoyed with the daily posts and updates on the schedule and workouts. (I've lost FB friends :-) )What I’ve come to realize is that after receiving so many nice emails from people who are not exposed to the endurance lifestyle and in part counting on my posts (this is what they tell me) of how I fit it in all that I do are not only flattering, but somehow makes me even more focused and wanting to excel even more for them and for me for that matter!

Jesse, my coach several months back put out a blog about managing your stress budget. Well, this hit home for me more than most items Jesse discusses because it has been a limiter of any advancement I’ll ever make in endurance sports. I’m not only impatient at times with not advancing, but managing all aspects of what Jesse refers to as “the budget” is simply not possible for me at this point in my life. The reality is that I’m not a gifted or talented athlete at any of the three sports. I am good however at mastering the part about the sport with going deep and enjoying the "suffer-fest" that race day brings.  Having so much crammed in daily makes that even more of a limiter. Jesse's Blog here Stress Budget

A typical week looks like this: Work 50-60 hours a week; Commute 15 hours, Train 18-20. If my math serves me well, there are only 168 total hours available during the week and that leaves about 10 total hours to me a day, which has to include sleep, kids and family. My wife calls me superman, but in the same breathe wonders when I’m going to crack. So, this is why I’m pretty sure I am stagnant with not getting faster, but that is "ok" because I have so much I want to do right now. It’s also amazing that I have not been sick or crashed!! It  has a lot to do with hitting a pure diet most of the time (the core diet). I can’t think of any other reason I’ve been able to pull off the last year or so this way!!!

I’ve said this before and it’s certainly the way my brain is wired. These are all choices and by putting so much on my plate I feel as though I’m living life to the fullest!  As soon as there is air, I find myself committing to more with things like filing a patent and inventing something or putting something new as a challenge to improve upon areas that are of interest to me. There are certainly pitfalls to this, but with the love and support of my insanely great wife, I fully feel that there is not and end in site as to what I can achieve.

On April 23^rd, 2011 I full filled a long-standing desire to coach recently via the Spaulding Rehab Marathon Team here in Boston. I want to tell you it’s been beyond an amazing experience and I gave it everything I had! Some of it was frustrating because in the beginning I was so over the top with spewing out all of the knowledge I have accumulated via Jesse. I’m pretty sure I offended a couple of our athletes/Team Mangers after coming down too tough on them with nutrition and rest, etc. I was just too passionate out of the gate but settled down and got into a grove.  I realized that my approach needed adjusting and I’m happy it was not too late! We had 27 athletes and the stories and achievements are what I remember most. We had folks that lost parents, and a couple with tough injuries. We had amazing people run the last miles with their kids like I want to with mine some day. In the end, the athletes crushed it and all 27 of them completed the Boston Marathon with huge smiles on their faces and at the same time rose close to $175,000. I have gained some great memories and friendships. I come away from the process a better man, certainly a better athlete after spending so much time covering race fueling, pacing and life planning. Wow game changer for them and me and this is where it all began for me almost seven years ago!!!

I also want to say that I’ve spent a huge amount of time tasking around goals and working more on living in the moment and working to focus on recognizing that some of my goals do not have to be "all or none", or "black and white" per se.  For instance, it does not have to be "Hawaii  and Kona or I’m not happy", beat my goal to the point of death vs appreciating the process. Right now, I’m very much ok with doing the best I can under all situations. That’s a big step for me and I want to thank my performance coach Joe from IPG for this work IPG.

So here we go with what’s up next.  This has been a year of evolving goals and racing as little as possible to let the family exhale and not put so much stress on my supporting cast. Racing is important to get your grove on for Ironman, but I don’t want to burn my crew out even though the next few weeks it’s all out for this athlete.

1) I’m racing Mooseman 70.3 in NH on June 5, 2011

2) Going to Lake Placid for my big build weekend for training from June 23-26

3) Nubble Lighthouse 2.4 mile Ocean swim on July 9, 2011. This race almost killed me last year and I want at it again!!

4) Lake Placid Ironman July 23, 2011 goal sub 10:30.

5) Atacama 7 marathons in 7 days March 2012 to raise funds for the Marlene Scribner RN Fund

That’s it for now. I promise to do a better job updating after getting the dust off the cover!!! Let’s go rip it!!!

Pulling it all together

If you couldn’t tell, I love putting a lot on my plate and have dove in deeply over the years into personal development when it comes to family, business and sport. Even more so since the endurance bug got a hold of me.

In fairness, I sometimes chuckle and shake my head as to how all this stuff goes down on a daily basis.  Once in a while some close to me pull out the pity party because they wonder out loud when I’m going to break with the schedule I keep. I remind them often that none of what I have going on in my life is without my doing. I fully believe that we all have choices in life and can only control how we react vs. being a victim. I'm certainly not a victim!! No one makes me do anything I don’t want to do. I don’t need to run marathons, train for Ironman’s or any other difficult goal oriented outcome. I chose this because it's one of the many ways I move towards my ideal life.

When it comes to how the days are rolling, here are some things I’ve come up with that have helped keep the train rolling! I’ve scaled some of the training goals down a bit and now focused on racing the Boston Marathon, coaching 26 athletes, Racing Ironman Lake Placid and some small prep races here and there. I’m commuting about 600-800 miles a week in the car between locations and work. That means Hotels a lot too!

Well credit is due of course again. My wife Michelle is amazing and she helps me immensely. She get’s all my bags ready, washes and folds every bit of stuff I produce, feeds me and packs my bags and food each day. I then pull on my personal assistant Sue to run all the daily items an executive needs taken care of. She handles every aspect of the calendar, bill pay you name it! I daily pull from my lifestyle coach Joe from IPG with measurable and quantifiable results and goals and last Qt2systems.com and the corediet.com for overlaid nutrition to keep me healthy and on target with endurance racing. With work I focus on working three straight weeks as a Wealth Advisor and on the fourth week I work on the business and myself termed Strategic Week.

So, as boring as this goes, and you asked for it; my typical week. I’ve replaced all my socks with the same color and brand so no more sorting to save time. I search often for ways to save time and be more efficient in any way I can. I have about 12 suits and 25 shirts in offices, the car, etc so I can be global and be ready to see clients and work regardless of where I am. I keep two sets of training gear in bags for swim, bike and run. Dry cleaning is key here! It seems as though I change three times a day!

Day prior at 4PM, I write my Six most important goals before leaving the office for the next day in Evernote.

5: 00PM. Head home or to a swim

6:30PM Eat, lean meat and fruit and veggies

7:00 Check emails and unwind while review next days training

8:00PM Read/Hang with the wife

8:30PM Protein Shake, some cottage cheese, head to sleep

4:30AM Wake and walk through my list of things I’m grateful for before putting my feet to floor.

4:45: Brush teeth and wonder what I can do on this day to better myself while staring in the mirror.

5:00 Hydrate and eat breakfast while watching YouTube or reading something positive. I’ll often post something positive or re-tweet to my athletes.

5:30 Workout begins

7:00 Showered and read my goals for the day and my first email and replenish food and recovery drink

7:30 In the car and plow through calls on my way to work

8:30 Meet with team and right at it

9:00 Piece of fruit

10:30 Snack

11:00 Read emails/respond

12:00 Salad with Grilled Chicken

1:00 Faye yogurt

2:00: Nuts

3:00 Fruit

3:30 Assemble goals for the next day

4:00 Read emails

4:30 Pack case and head to next workout or dinner with kids at 5:00PM

My wife pre-packs all of my meals for the prior day after reading my nutrition requirements depending on the volume. Right now I’m running a 350-calorie deficit to lose 1lb per week for the next 10 weeks in order to weigh in at 142 for the Boston Marathon. I typically have 2-4 hours of workouts during the workweek and 4-6 per day on the weekends. Volume right now is 17 hours and will cap out at about 23 hours before Placid. I usually have 2-3 meeting per day outside of the office with clients from Monday to Thursday and use Fridays to re-group and catch-up with reading and planning.

So there you have it…

Atacama we are not crossing. At least not this year!

Seven nights in a row, I woke up at 1,2,3,1,12:30,3,4AM, you get the picture. During these nights my days were spent running what it seemed like a half marathon every day and the usual 3 hours hard training in the morning followed by an even harder weekend of 4-hour workout days. The weekend runs were in the 20’s each day. Driving crazy distances, putting as much time into work and family as life allows, and the daily grind, something or someone was going to give and I knew it. Nothing I could do was combating the mounting pressure!

For a few days I was so tired that even when I relaxed I felt that I could not breathe full enough to rest my body. Even when there where nights when I could sleep in and did, I did not feel restored. I wondered when I was going to crack!!!

You see, I know myself and count on myself as unstoppable. It’s my identity and I’m not proud of that, but we all have our crosses I am told. I did not doubt that I would be able to hang in this state until the start of Atacama. All endurance training and races are all about the sacrifice and hard work before you tow the line. Actually race day often is anticlimactic. I’m ok with this and love it!

A few weeks back when I started to assemble all of the details it became apparent early on that all three of these goals were not well suited with each other. I guess in a form of mourning, I was also coming to terms with the fact that all of the races were possibly going to be completed in an average fashion and in the end I’m not ok with that. I had also put a ton of time racing Ironman and I felt I had unfinished business to attend (Hawaii).

You see, the growth here for me and the profound aspect is that I realized after killing it for so many years that I certainly am busy, crazy driven, passionate about a lot of stuff and have the Quantity, but it irks me that I’m not well grounded in living in the moment and often lack the quality that is so important to me. Do you ever have that feeling?

I had lunch with my good friend Karen who is an internal medicine doctor and she spent the better part of the lunch grilling me about getting base-line data on me before Atacama. She made me promise that I’d do a cardiac echo and blood work after a couple of athletes who died with underlining hidden issues. After not being able to wiggle out of it, I was off to see my doc to get what he called “the full Monty”. After a couple of days everything came out fine except it showed I was a tad anemic and had to have a repeat.

Over the past few days I agonized about how I was going to pull this off and not knowing what quitting is. I’m simply not wired to quit or give-up. I was dying inside because over the many weeks I train myself during each training session to go to that dark place so as it’s not foreign when it’s needed. I was on my bike checking work, etc and then I knew I had to re-focus and pull the plug.

I wrote Jesse and told him I needed to refocus and to call it off and he wrote me back telling me that he thought it was smart and took a lot of courage to realize this. This made me feel better and after talking it over with my incredibly supportive, amazing wife who was concerned about me, the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders. 

I took three days off of training and had my plan re-worked to focus on the next 29 weeks with now just Boston and Lake Placid on tap. I added qt2 full nutrition support to better learn how to restore and to get stronger during the next push. I also have the huge honor of coaching 15 mostly first time athletes to run their first marathons via Spaulding Rehab. It’s certainly a passion of mine and a great chance to give back to those in need. I’m sure this is why one obstacle turns into an opportunity; I have a chance to touch someone the way I was and paying it forward can never get old.

The next 29 weeks start now and Atacama or something like this will be waiting for me!!!!

Preparation, Atacama and Compex Elite Recovery

Are you being fully tested? When you are tested and your back is to the wall, who will you become? Who will you serve? Do you see yourself as a visionary, an extraordinary father, husband, leader or something else? Do you think life will happen by an act of God, or are you the one who is persistent, a person of never dying action and Iron will that can accomplish monumental things? Who are those people anyway? How did they or do they separate themselves and accomplish the unattainable? Who are you and what do YOU stand for? Define yourself! I dare you!

Well, these are the sorts of questions I ask myself on a daily basis and as I come close to the Atacama, the goals I have formalized are not too average to say the least. In fact, it appears before I have even tried any of them some say that all or none of them are achievable.

In fairness, those who help me pull this off have my best interest at heart and worry that I will be disappointed that I might not accomplish the goals. They are doing everything in their power to help me get there, but really good coaching is about having very honest communication on what’s real and what’s not. It now looks like I stand alone and think my goals are achievable. However, the way I am wired does not offer any other alternative. There are so many instances in my life when my back has been against the wall, when I was told I would fail even before I laced my shoes for the dance, showed up for my first day of work that are too many to put unto paper. Even at this moment I am being tested and I like how I react and overcome. Does that make me a realist or off the charts insane? I don’t know. I’m not sitting back running for office or care what other’s think. What I do know is that I am a person of action and that my reach is further than my grasp (#9). I can’t live in the “safe zone”. I would not bet against me though based on my resume.

Here are my daily affirmations re-worked:

Mark’s Daily Affirmations

1. Mark, you made bold moves to assure Mark and Bella have a fighting chance of success and happiness! You have the tools, resolve and emotional IQ to have the kind of family life they deserve, the one you never had and its up to you to fight for them. Since the day you knew they were coming, you made a contract with their souls that you will be there for all your days that cannot ever be broken. You will never not fight for them.

2. Pattern interrupt the familiar and embraces the unknown. Don't live in a comfort zone. Adversity is lurking and will sneak up on you unless you proactively live your life to get what you want.

3. Visualize your Finish at Atacama, the Boston Marathon, Lake Placid; you are now a World Champion. Your efforts carry over to your entire Endeavour’s. No one will get this.

4. The difficulty of a problem is in direct proportion to the reward. Don't settle Mark, you are not average.

5. Someone, somewhere is in a hospital bed right now begging for the opportunity you have right now, step into your moment now!

6. You have not lived until you do something nice for someone

Who can never repay you; Random act’s of kindness.

7. Learn like you'll live forever; live like you'll die tomorrow. Marlene died with regrets, you won't!!

8. Pattern yourself after incredible people who have done what you set out to do, then set out to do it for yourself but with your meaning and better.

9. Your reach must be further than your grasp. No easy goals here!

10. The past is bedrock, unchangeable, but the future's clay to

be molded day by day. Power of now!!! Be curious of that mental dialogue, but it's the past and you will garner the power to be all that you desire unless you live with passion.

11. SMILE NO MATTER WHAT until it hurts. Most important thing you can do every day!

12. I will win. Why? I'll tell you why. Because I have faith,

courage, enthusiasm and strength, and I'm committed to

doing my best every day. No excuses!

13. Don’t deny the reality; it is what it is, just deny the finality of the situation that is difficult that is staring you in the face.

14. A successful man gets what he wants, a wise man wants

what he gets.

15. My tool is wisdom, my strength is sheer tenacity. Mental toughness. Who can complete an Ironman with broken ribs, St George in the Big Ring? Almost die in the ocean?  

16. Don’t take yourself or your life too serious; we are only on this planet for a blink. (laugh more, you are a funny person)

17. Don’t major in minor things.

18. Love that feeling of being free, driving your Ducati with the wind against your face.

19. You cannot be idle in this pursuit. Skipping even one-day means you are living a lie, which I cannot do.

20. Insane preparation is what it takes for this newer level.

21. Top American Atacama

22. Boston Marathon, sub 3

24. Lake Placid, 10:10

25. Ironman World Championships

Recently I reached out to Dean Karnzas the famous Ultra guy to get guidance on completing the Atacama. His response, “live”. While this was not the kind of information I found helpful, it was pretty much spot on as to how tough this race will be. 

The issues here are multiple and like anything it all depends on luck and execution and hard work. The hard work is happening as we speak. I’ve been building my aerobic engine for months now. It will be a miracle to pull even one of these off without getting hurt.

Here are the coaching concerns:

1) That I have not taken into account how messed up I will be after doing Atacama

2) Turing around to do Boston so fast with speed is not realistic

3) I’ll not have enough time to put into the biking volume for Placid to race fast.

4) Anyone of these would require their own season and don’t work together.

So in sum and substance, it all makes sense but I refuse to say I can’t come close too if not all.  I’d rather die trying than to not try at all. That’s the whole point to very, very hard goals. 

Compex Elite

About three weeks ago I got this unit called the Compex Elite after seeing some videos and reading that Macca was using it as part of his recovery process. Often the training runs I have are in excess of 13 miles a whack with biking etc put in the middle.

The recovery routine I have deployed religiously is as follows. Shower, Ice Compression with Play Harder then Complex Elite stim and recovert drinks and good food. The Compex has helped so much that it has made all the soreness goes away and I come back harder like never before. Also, I have had this nagging ab strain for the past five months and this has been the only thing to get the symptoms’ to go away. I plug it in for long car rides and let it do its thing. I highly encourage you to try it. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of massage and recovery. I’m very exited to have it as part of the arsenal to achieve these lofty goals. www.shopcompex.com

So, it’s full-on, head down execute. I’m sure putting lofty goals out in the universe is a chance for some to “nay-say” I say, never let others determine your legacy or outcome. Carpe Diem and bring it!! 

Recovery and Chile

Preparation continues for Chile/Atacama Crossing (same place they just plucked the miners from 33 of 33!) and the miles are definitely accumulating at a good clip now!

The coaches and I have been assembling data on Chile and reaching out to others  who have completed this event prior to get a good feel for how to attack this feat. The training is very different compared to the typical ironman build I’ve done multiple times. I’m still doing a little swimming and biking but mainly I am back in the gym working on building a more solid core and trying to stave off injury for the increasing load that is happening each week. Check out the race data here: http://www.4deserts.com/atacamacrossing/

The focus now is to go out there extremely slow and methodical for each run. On the days where recovery runs are called for are even slower. They are really, really slow and I’ve mixed them up a bit by going off trail and running in the woods on packed mud and pine needles without a Garmin or heart rate strap (naked).

In the beginning of this build I was completing some of my Z1 runs at the top end of my zones. This is always an issue for me and I got pulled back and reminded by the coaches that there was no way I’d be able to show up on March 6^th at Chile, attempting to run a sub 3 in Boston and transition into full blow Ironman mode for lake Placid by cranking out almost peak runs. Not getting injured is going to be a miracle in of its self. I’ve reeled it back about 10bpm’s per run and now I get really nice emails from the coach when I barley crack the Z1 charts. I know that going slower is the only way to go faster. However, it’s against my nature and fight with it. I do feel that I am developing a pretty solid aerobic engine over the fast few weeks.

Recovery and 110% (play harder!)

One of the hard parts of putting in all this training is also putting together all of the remedies, concoctions and nutrition to recover the correct way. It seems like every run is over 10 miles these days with some of the more intense ones being completed as split runs with combined volume of 20 plus miles.

Over the years, I tried my best to use ice baths as a recovery tool. I’ve read all the data and it makes complete sense getting in a cold water based environment to reduce swelling. I’ve felt so much better and come back stronger after using them. However, each and every time I felt like I was going to have cardiac arrest after getting into the tub filled with ice water. A few weeks back I followed my massage therapist suggestions (she’s a world class marathoner) by using a diaper and sitting in the tub and slowly letting the water creep into the tub and then apply ice last. By the time you are about to freeze to death, you let the water drain. Start to finish this was to take 15 minutes. It was a nuisance lugging the ice upstairs and not to practical.

So I was on a tear to find out a better way after getting frustrated!

I was on Face Book one night and read a posting by Kellie Smirnoff that discussed this company called 110% that actually came up with a great idea!! This product has fit into my routine nicely. They have really comfortable compression knickers and calf sleeves that have pockets where you can put ice packets in and get the full benefit of an ice bath and the areas that are needed (no more diapers). Because I have a long commute, right after my run and recovery drink I put these babies on over my shorts and drive to my meetings. Tonight after my 10 miler, I wore them at dinner immediately after the run vs. ignoring recovery all together. Total multi tasking at its best!! I was using Zoot compression for a couple of years but I was so hot wearing them that I started avoiding them along with the ice baths. I like this company so much I’m looking forward to buying more stuff!! The compression knickers and calf ice sleeves have made a huge impact on my back-to-back runs that are pretty standard at least until April of 2011.  Check them out http://www.110playharder.com

Next up: Please RSVP if you have not already to our Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation event on Nov 4^th. We have some really nice auction and raffle items. It’s going to be a fun night. To RSVP click here: http://new.evite.com/#view_invite:eid=00A5AAQZXGK5ZYW2CEO7WQYVESS5BA