Erin Strout, journalist extraordinaire and do-it-all for Race with Purpose reminds me not to bury the lead, so here it is. Last night Wally was discharged from the Animal Medical Center. After signing over the house for collateral, we carried Wally out in his carrier and back to the familiar surroundings of his home, you know the place where Henry and Little Girl and Wally all ignore each other.

Animals are amazing. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this cat was on death’s door. According to his vets, he was near dead. On Tuesday when Dr. Fox told us that his heart rate was at 260 beats per minute and it was expected that it would freeze and stop at any point and we were told that they would not try to resuscitate him, we were devastated and really had to stay focused and positive. It’s now Sunday and he is jumping on and off of the bed, hopping over fences and seems to be back to his normal self, albeit he has three sets of medication that he takes and we had to stay up last night counting his breathing to make sure it wasn’t becoming faster than expected – a sign that fluid was building up rapidly. We have to bring him in on Monday to get more fluid drained out of his lungs but all in all, I find it mazing that animals can bounce back so quickly, while a human would be laid up in bed either immobilized, completely fatigued or worse yet, mentally defeated. Animals just don’t seen to have that option. We can learn a lot from them.

So an update to the Cadence Kona Challenge. Again not to bury the lead, I was not selected as one of the 10 finalists. I did give it my best effort and felt I left it all out there. I have Wally to thank for that as I had his picture binder clipped to the stand in front of my bike and on the deck of the treadmill. I definitely dipped into that pool a number of times during the tests when I felt like crap.

I won my heat on the bike and ran pretty well on the treadmill with less than fresh legs, but apparently it wasn’t meant to be. It was a great experience, I got a lot of testing for free and the people were all incredibly supportive throughout the experience. At the end of the day, if the goal was to have 96 people leave the site feeling like they were all winners, even though we weren’t ultimately selected, Cadence and their sponsors (Zoot, Suunto, Cyfac, etc…) did just that.

I have to give a shout out to Bill Porter from Suunto who was my own personal photojournalist/TriScoop heckler throughout the event and to Bill Risch and Cindy who came out to cheer me on. A great highlight was being able to interview and then run with Samantha McGlone who is the70.3 distance World Champion and who came in second just a few weeks ago at the Ironman World Chamionships in Kona. This was her first Ironman race, how crazy is that?

In case you are interested, and in the spirit of full disclosure, here are the results from my tests:

Bike

Functional Threshold Power = 257 watts (up from 225 in 2005)
Functional Threshold Heart Rate = 161 bmp (up from 146 in 2005)
Max Power = 340 watts (up from 300 watts in 2005)
Lactate Power to weight ratio of 3.02

Run

Functional Threshold Pace = 8 mph (down from 8.8 in 2005)
Functional Threshold Heart Rate = 165 bmp (down from 170 in 2005)

Weight = 187 lbs (up from 183 in 2005)

Resting Heart Rate = 48 (up from 42 in 2005)

So all in all, I’ve become a little more efficient and picked up a little power on the bike along with some additional weight – not exactly a good thing, and slowed down a bit on the run. I’m pretty pleased with this after spending the past two years focusing on everyone else’s training but my own. So it’s in writing, I’m looking to drop to 176 lbs and move my threshold power up to 275 by this summer. Given that I did the treadmill test right after the bike test, I’m alright with the numbers here, especially after popping off a 19:30 5K last weekend. The drop in weight will pull me under 40 minutes for a 10K this spring and give me a solid base to build from.