Friday, April 29, 2011

2012 Season

So once again it has been a long time since I’ve written. As the season gets closer, I am sure I will write more.

For the most part, things have been going really well. I started swimming in January but then got sick and had a very sick pet. As a result I had to take several weeks off of swimming and then started back up in mid/late February. Since then I’ve been swimming a lot more than normal. Typically I swim a minimum of 4 days per week and get in about 3k yards. Sometimes I add a 5 day of swimming to swim with the group at the WAC. Right now I am already faster than I was at my fastest last year.

I swam a 5:45 500scy at the WAC the other day…I was swimming alone with no motivation, so that was a pretty good time in a very slow pool. With jhawk coming this weekend, I will have a good opportunity to swim a good 500 with come faster guys. We’ll see what happens.

Biking has been going very well recently. A few weeks back I purchased a new stem and dropped my front end down quite a bit. Unfortunately I do what I always do and got carried away…rode really hard and wasn’t ready for the new position. That really screwed up my back and hip for a while. My running took the brunt of that mistake. I then followed it up with a fit that had the seat too high. As a result my hip and back stayed sore for quite some time. In fact it is still sore as I only corrected my fit a couple days ago. I noticed a dramatic increase in comfort right away. I am hoping that this will simply fix the problem. I have recordings of my fit I need to review. I tend to sit closer to my right leg, which gives it just a little extra reach in the pedal stroke. With a higher seat I suspect my left leg was having to reach farther than it wants to. As a result my entire left leg was a bit tight causing this issue.

My running, well I don’t really know. All off season it was going really well. I was on the edge of breaking a 20min 5k. And then I got sick, and my pet got sick, and I hurt my hip on the bike…and before I realized it I’d lost quite a bit of training time. I never took an extended time off of training, only a couple small spurts of 4-5 days off. But until this past weekend I really felt like I lost a lot of fitness. Until Sunday every run felt poor. That seems to be going away now as Sunday was a fantastic run for me.

Despite that, I have been training way more than in previous years. Scott Bowe is assisting in my coaching and he’s attempting to teach me discipline and how to control my efforts. Every workout isn’t a crushing workout requiring recovery time; I now have easy workouts too. I’ve found that I am able to spend much more time working out doing this. I’ve taken a look back at some workouts last season, in particular 3hr efforts on the bike. Last season I’d typically do 3hr rides at an average of 360 watts and then go do an hour run faster than I should. As a result I’d get home and collapse…requiring a couple days off. This season has been quite a bit different. My longer rides have been at lower wattages allowing me to work out more often. It has been a welcome change as I am not a complete disaster after my longer rides.

Overall I suspect I am quite a bit faster than I was last season. But we won’t know until this weekend. I am confident in my swimming and biking, I am just not sure where my run will be.

I have a pretty fun race schedule for the year.

Here is what I am doing this year…

May 1 – Jhawk
May 20-22 – Triple T
June 11 – Elkhart Lake
June 18 – High Cliff
July 24th – Tri-ing for Children
August 20 – Pigman
September – N/A
October – N/A
November – Worlds in Vegas?

I was originally planning to do the Racine 70.3. But with Pigman being my A race for the season, it makes more sense to skip it this year and train through.

Jhawk is a little sprint race.
Triple T is a 3-day 4-race weekend of hell.
Friday night is a super sprint race. Saturday morning is an Olympic distance race. Saturday afternoon is an Olympic distance race that goes bike, swim, run. Sunday morning is a half ironman. I don’t really know how I let myself get talked into that insanity.

Elkhart Lake is an Oly race I’ve done every year. The change this year is that I signed up in the Elite wave. I won my age group last year, plus I want a shot to win the swim overall and take home some money.

High Cliff is a half Iron race. I thought it would be a good idea to get in a stand-alone half iron distance race as practice for Pigman.

Tri-ing for children is a fun Olympic pretty close to home.

Pigman is in Iowa. It is my only chance to qualify for the ITU World Championships. I need to score a top 5 in my age group 35-39. If my run starts coming around quickly, like I really think it will…I am pretty sure I can do this. Last year at Halfmax I ran a 1:46. But realistically I completely cooked myself on that bike by pushing way too hard early in that ride.

By the time Pigman gets here, I am hoping I can run a stand-alone half marathon pretty close to 1:30. If that’s the case, I should be able to run a half Iron around 1:35…assuming I pace things properly. That should be pretty realistic especially if I drop the weight I need to. My weight is currently sitting right where it was at the end of last season, pretty close to 200-202. With all the training I am doing, I only need to watch what I eat for a few weeks to drop some weight. I just need to put together a plan to do that.

Anyway, that is it for now.