Boston and St Anthonys

good luck to all of you heading to Boston on Monday - have a terrific time - enjoy the Newton Hills

good luck to everyone heading to St Anthony's next weekend - be careful with all the yahoos that think they are pros!

everyone else - good luck in your races or training - catch up with yoou after Nationals

T minus 9

it is now 9 days and a wake up until Duathlon Nationals. The race has officially reached capacity - 1200 entrants. I have about 130 in my age group. There were only 300 entrants last year and I now I will be racing against almost 50% of that number. I am so glad that the race has become so popular and that people have come out of the woodwork to support the sport of Duathlon.

Of course - having 130 the age group is going to make the goal of qualifying for Worlds that much harder but hey, no one will be able to say that the World Qualifiers this year did not earn it.

Last year 2:03 won my age group and placed in the top 10 overall - my guess is that this year that time will not sniff the top 10 in the age group. We will see!

This weekend I have a tough workout today then an recovery 8 mile run/1 hour bike tomorrow and a killer workout on Sunday - runs, hills, time trials all lumped into one fun session!

On Monday i will be rolling out of here and heading to Chapel Hill to train and relax and then next Saturday we will be off to Richmond to get ready to race.

Keep your fingers crossed - it will be a wild one!

so much for rest

rest day is over - get your butt out there and work your butt off for 6 more days - come on let's go - do it - do it - do it.

No, those were not the words of my coach - they were the words in my head this morning. Reminded me of being back in the military.

This is my last hard week before the race - 6 days of various efforts then 1 week of taper and it will be race day.

Today is fast 800s with my recovery on the bike - might have to be inside with the nasty weather on the way :(

Rest days - awwwww rest days

Rest days are one of the most important days any athlete can have - they let your body recover from all the stress you are putting on it while working out. rest days are when you get stronger - if you do not take any days off you are doing more harm than good. You continually tear your body down while working out and rest is what you do to build the muscle back up and make you stronger. Without the proper rest you risk sickness, over training and most importantly injury.

I find rest days to be tough. I do not know what to do with myself. Last week on my rest day I was able to mow the lawn and catch up on a bunch of errands and knock out some laundry. Today, I am sure i will be going stir crazy by the time to day is over but I know that rest is super important right now. I am less than two weeks away from my race and just came off a week of HIGH intensity training. Today will be a day of work and relaxation and some much needed stretching. Then tomorrow I will awake rejuvenated and ready for another HARD week before taper down to the race.

Remember, rest days are essential. Make sure you are getting the proper rest and relaxation - it will make your training that much easier and beneficial.

Another workout bites the dust

warning to all who read this - do not try this at home without the guidance of a coach and a doctor!

Today's workout was a "Sean Special" - a workout that Sean and I have been doing in various forms for a couple of years and I really enjoy. It is a hard workout that can not be done every week - but as a hard effort and tune up for Nationals, today was a great day to give it a go.

10 mile warm up on the bike, 1 mile run warm up on the track
2 miles run on the track 90%
quick transition
7 miles hilly hard effort bike
quick transition
1 miles run on the track 85%
quick transition
5 miles hilly hard effort bike
quick transition
2 miles run on the track 85%
1 mile run cool down
10 miles bike cool down

we have done this workout where instead of riding you run the cross country course - or do a tempo run off the track - the running ones are easier but the bike was perfect for the training I needed.

Results as follows - 2 mile run 12:02, 1 mile run 5:55, 2 mile run 12:04 (this was over 85% though, but felt good doing it)

The wind was howling today so the bike legs were extra tough but if it is not tough it does not make you stronger (or kill you)!

I was pretty encouraged by this workout - tomorrow is an easier day with a 10 mile run and an open water recovery swim. I hear Sunday is a hill repeat day on the bike - we will see.

Oh my - welcome to my workout world

A little background first - I have a goal of Duathlon Nationals this year - it is very early in the year for an A race but I figured I would give it a try. My training has been altered greatly because of a minor knee injury I suffered and missed over 8 weeks of training. My training for Nationals started on 3/2 for a race on 4/26 - 8 weeks is not an ideal time to train for a race of this magnitude but Sean and I thought it would be worth a try any way. Since I was pretty far behind in my training we have really tried to step things up and go through Prep, Build, Base, Peak, Taper phases all in 8 weeks - normally we would take 16-18 weeks for something like this.

Right now I am in my last two weeks of hard effort (Peak) before 1 week of easy (Taper) training for the race. I get my workouts from Sean on Sunday night for the following week - however I only look at them one day at a time. I figure one day at a time is all you can control any way so why fret over Thursdays workout when you still have to get Monday's workout done????

Tuesday night when I was logging my results on Tuesdays workouts I looked at Wednesday and here is what I found:

1 mile w.u
4 x 90 sec fast/90 sec. recovery. You should feel like you are going to throw up..
800 easy jog
2 x 800 fast/400 recovery
1 mile c.d

25 mile bike over a rolling course

Yes, the effort is listed as - "You should feel like you are going to throw up".

Wednesday is coming off a race on Sunday, easy weight and run workout Monday, Intervals on the bike and run on Tuesday.

WELL, the workout went well - the 90 second efforts were hard as heck! The first one was ok, 2nd got a little tougher, 3rd was murder and close to throwing up, 4th was a little easier because it was the last one. After the 1/2 mile recovery I did the 1/2 mile speed efforts in 2:47 and 2:46 - so there was still a little left in the tank!

I hear tomorrows workout is worse - we will see tonight when I am prepping for the morning session - at least tomorrow we have a big group working out together - then we can all suffer at the same time!

Congrats to athletes

Congrats to everyone who completed int eh Great Clermont Tri this weekend - we had many folks finish in the hardware for the sprint tri this weekend

Beth C
Missy
Jason
Laurie

these 4 all took home some hardware - congrats and great job to them tuning up for their races.

One last tune up race

this weekend was the Great Clermont Triathlon - a race that has been around for over 25 years and used to draw thousands of people for an early season tune up before St Anthony's. Over the years the race has decreased in sized but it still serves as a good tune up for folks looking to find out if they have their racing legs.

I decided to use this race as a tune up for my upcoming Duathlon. Since I have only been in the water 3-4 times this year I decided to enlist the help of fellow Team Hendryx coach Steve Griggs to do the swimming. I would do the bike and run. Sean and I decided that I could go out for a hard effort run while Steve was swimming and then meet him in transition and I would go off on the bike then run. Making it a duathlon training race for me.

The plan was - 5 minutes before Steve's wave went off I went for a run. I decided to run 28 minutes and that would have me back in time to get in to transition and meet Steve. I ran in and around the town of Clermont getting in some good rollers and was able to run pretty hard - I ran about 4.2 miles in 28 minutes.

Once I got back to the transition area I waited for Steve who was there about 2 minutes after I was done running (not bad timing) and off on the bike I went. Steve went off to get his training done for the day. The plan was to make this a hard training day and give a very good effort.

The bike went well. The course consists of mostly rollers the whole way with a couple climbs that a short but steep and you need to get out of the saddle to get to the top. I tried to catch as many people as I could on the bike and see if I could maintain a good steady pace. Over the 25 mile course I averaged about 20-21 mph and was able to keep my HR around 145-150 - so it was all good.

After the bike I transitioned as quickly as possible and went out for the run. Already having over 4 miles on my legs did not seem to be a problem - I went out fast and tried to maintain a HR around 170. The first lap of the run was 19:30, which is not too bad for a 5k. The next lap I seemed to struggle a tad - but still maintain form and tried to keep my HR consistent until the last mile. The second lap was 20:30 - one minute slower is not to encouraging. However, since it was a 2 lap course I could gage how I was running compared to the leads and to the folks chasing me - I seemed to be gaining ground on a lot of them so others were struggling a little too. Final 10k time was 40:00 about a 6:27 pace.

Overall, I was encouraged by the times for the race. I ran well before the bike and well after the bike. I still have some work to do over the next 2 weeks but think I can continue to improve and really be able to rip off a good race in Richmond in 3 weeks.

The race at the end of the month is a 10k, 40k, 5k - I think I can get my first run time to about 39:30 and the last 5k down to 19:00 but we will see.

List Friday - you might be an endurance athlete if ...

I have to admit I stole these from someone on FB but I thought some of them were great. It was originally title "You know you are a triathlete when.."

1.You have a water bottle when you drive your car
2.In the summer your legs are smoother than your girlfriend's.
3.In the winter your legs are still smoother than your girlfriend’s
4.You take more showers in a locker room than at home
5.6:30 am is sleeping in
6.You clean your bike more often than your car
7.When asked to mow the lawn in 90 degree heat, you say that its too hot to do that (and you mean it) and then an hour later you go on a century ride because its so nice out.
8.you wave at other cyclists, because all triathletes are friendly and if they are not, they are probably purist cyclists trying to get into triathlons and they do not know that triathletes are friendly
9.your 8 year old comes home with the school record for the mile and says, he took it out in a nice pace he could hold.....everyone else died.
10.You've given up trying to go on training runs/rides with your boyfriends because they don't take it too well when you kick their butt.

I find 9 to be hilarious and I find 8 to be oh so true!!!

Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend whatever you may be doing.

Speed work

speed work is something that everyone should do - walker and runners of all ability benefit from speed work and it mixes up the workouts so an athlete is not doing the same thing all the time at the same pace. if you run at the same pace all the time you get to a point where each run gets easier and easier and the benefits start to go away. Add speed work once a week and vary your paces and you will see the advantages in a hurry. We put all of our athletes through track workouts - we just vary the pace based on ability - we have seen great results with this and have seen many PRs set over the years.

I did my own speed session yesterday - after my open water swim. My session was 400 hard/ 200 easy, 200 h, 200 e, 200 h, 400 e - 4 times. With a 1.5 mile warm up and 1.5 mile cool down.

My 400s were 1:24, 1:20, 1:17 and 1:14
My 200s were all between :36 - :38

I felt great doing this workout - it is nice to work on top end speed to see what limits my body has and how fast i will be able to push it in upcoming races.

Good luck with everything - enjoy the track!

Open Water Swimming

I took the Team In Training athletes to Lucky's this morning for an open water swim and the ones that showed up did well. For some of them it was their first open water swim. Lucky's is always a challenge on week days because you swim before the sun comes up so you are sighting on a light on the other side of the lake and it is tough to see. All of the swimmers did well though and were able to make the 1000 yard swim and sign the Wall of Fame at Lucky's.

One of the problems of being the swim coach is - I have to get in the water and swim too. I do not think I have swam open water in 4-6 months. I took my wet suit today because 72 degree water is still too cold for my butt! It turns out I swam decent - I did the 1000 in about 18 minutes which is about 1:48 every hundred - since I stopped a few times to look out for the team I guess I can live with it. It was actually kind of fun. I still get kind of freaked by swimming in the open water in the dark (feeding time) but i figure there are enough of us out there that the chances of a gator choosing me are slim :-)

I might even head back again in the next 4 months for another swim.