Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I’m Baaack!

I feel like I haven’t written in a while, and I guess that’s because I haven’t!  I subscribe to other bloggers, some regular, and others who are worse than I about keeping current.  I don’t know how Fatty manages to come up with daily content worth reading, because I cannot.  I figure if I don’t have something worth saying I’ll just keep quiet.  So here’s what’s been going on.

I took a much deserved break after my last race, and my wife and I took a mini-vacation to Detroit to visit our babies.  Seeing the kids was nice, and minimal or no training for a few days was even nicer.

That lasted a week, and then coach threw me back into the deep end.  For a lot of triathletes, what I’m doing isn’t that hard.  For me, 12 hours a week of training IS a lot.  When I consider that my easy day consists of 1.5 hour bike ride, and a 5-6 mile run, it’s a tough week!

While the training has been tough, it hasn’t been back to my normal yet.  One weekend I did a long brick with the Bike Barn triathlon club, and last weekend I went to Austin to train.  When I hit the roads Saturday it will be the first day back on my normal bike route in 5 or so weeks!

Austin was fun and very different.  The ride was much hillier, and there weren’t a lot of other riders out there.  I did see one couple I wanted to catch/pass, but with 50 yards left they turned off onto another road.  Not being that familiar with the roads there, I keep my route simple – an out and back.  The last 10-15 minutes of the out were the best with the hardest hills.  I need to do some longer rides (longer than 3.5 hours) so I can get further into those hills.

I ran at Town Lake.  I tried that once before:  I ended up taking a wrong turn and wound up running down Loop 1.  This time I decided to follow someone to make sure I didn’t get messed up.  I jumped in behind a couple of older looking ladies.  Let me clarify what I mean by older.  They were younger than I, but older than the 29+ freaks of nature that frequent that area and run like Amazon women!  Seriously, there are some really fast people that run out there!

Anyway, I pulled in behind these women thinking I could easily keep up, only before I knew it I was sucking air and working hard to keep up.  Call it stubborn, or male ego, or whatever, but I wasn’t going to let those ladies drop me.  Fortunately they pulled off to end their run after about 3 miles.  Knowing where I was, how I got there, and how to get back to the start, I was able to do another 7 miles at my own pace; faster than some, and slower than many others.

I’ve got two and a half weeks to my next race, an Olympic distance and probably my first swim without a wetsuit.  The best part is that I’m hardly thinking about the race.  I’ve got this distance, it might even be my best.  The only thing that has be a bit concerned is the lack of a wetsuit.  I know I’ll be slower, so I just need to start a bit further back, relax, and just get through the swim.  The plan is to push a little bit on the bike but not as hard as the last Olympic so that I have more gas left for the run.  I think that is where I can make up some real time.

Let’s get it on!

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