Recovery

Right now I'm one week out from the 70.3 World Championships and six weeks out from the Ironman World Championship. I am really focused on my recovery. It all starts with my sleep. I use a product from Standard Process called Mintran (https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Min-Tran#.VANqnPldWSo). One of the benefits is the ease of temporary stress. I find that Mintran helps me relax at night so I'm not to wound up. I am also making sure I stay on top of my electrolytes. My main goal is to make sure my levels are topped off each night. With the heavy training right now, it is easy to get depleted.

70.3 Timberman: Just racing

I headed up to 70.3 Timberman with my family and my friends the Swifts. Timberman was my first 70.3 race back in 2001. I really enjoy everything about the race. The area is beautiful and my family really enjoys the weekend. This year was my 11th time racing this event. My coach and I had slightly different goals for this race. I was still carrying a little fatigue from USAT Nationals the week before and I just wanted to enjoy the race. My coach wanted to use the race to prep for 70.3 Worlds and Kona. I felt that I only have so many bullets to use during the year and I did not want to use them up at this time. So my game plan was to swim consistent, bike without pushing to hard, then run to my rhythm. I got a good jump at the beginning of my swim wave and managed to get open water right away. I did the entire swim by myself. I just had to navigate through some of the earlier waves around the turn buoys, but overall the swim was very enjoyable. My Blue Seventy Helix is so enjoyable to swim in. I came out of the water at: 27:37 46th Overall. The wetsuit strippers are fantastic at this race and really helped me as I had forgotten to use my Tri Swim glide. I made my way through transition quickly. Fortunately it was an overcast day, as I had also forgotten my sun glasses (rookie mistakes). I hopped on my Trek Speed Concept and just tried to get up to a decent effort. I ended up riding well within my comfort zone and I only spent 5 minutes in zone 3 heart rate. Here's a testament to my Trek Speed Concept. I road the bike course at 15 normalized watts lower than my best on the course, but still had my fastest bike split there by over 1 minute. I came off the bike with a split of: 2:16:50 which had moved me up to 7th Overall. I got out onto the run and just tried to find an effort level that was decent without any pain. The weather was really nice and I was able to dial in my nutrition. I came into the finish line with a run time of: 1:21:50. My overall time was 4:08:57 5th Overall/ 1st Amateur This was my 2nd best time on the course and I had a wonderful time with my family over the weekend. I'm really looking forward to going back next year and racing the Sprint race the day before the 70.3 with my oldest son, Ryan. This will be his first adult triathlon. Enjoying the journey!

USAT Olympic Nationals: Attempt at Speed

I had decided at the end of 2013 racing season that I wanted to try to go back to USAT Olympic distance National Championships. I had not raced Nationals since 2008 and I wanted to see if I could pull any speed out of my legs. I always consider Nationals to be the most competitive Olympic distance race in the country and it definitely lived up to the hype. My training journey into the race was very interesting. It was the first time that I experienced significant issues with recovery. My coach, Paul Regensberg, laid out a game plan that incorporated training for my three biggest races of the year, USAT Nationals (Aug 9th), 70.3 World Championships (Sep 7th), and IM World Championships (Oct 11th). The combination of trying to add speed work into my longer strength training left me really depleted at times. The end result was that I just could not hit my Olympic distance training properly a day or two after 5 hour bike rides or 2 hour runs. However, I did feel I was in the best possible shape I could be in considering trying to train for all 3 distances. I was really looking forward to racing so I could find out what I could do. I traveled out to Milwaukee, WI with my friend Chris Swift, 940 miles each way in the RV: I had a good wait race morning as I was in the 9th wave to start and we had 20 minute cushion from the wave prior to ours. . Once my wave started, I tried to get out as fast as possible. The first 200 meters went great and I found myself in 2nd place. Then I watched as 12 guys swam past me and dropped me. I had made one mistake when I thought I could swim faster than another athlete I had been following. I ended up swimming solo for the remainder of the swim and came out of the water in 21:01 and 14th place in my age group. I had a pretty good first transition and managed to pass 4 athletes before we hit the bike course. However, I did not realize this at the time. My goal for each discipline of the race was: 95% effort on the swim, 100% of FTP on the bike, and 105% of threshold on the run. I tried to get right up to my FTP, but I noticed that I was having a hard time hitting my numbers. As I continued to see my power numbers sit well below my goal, I became pretty frustrated and decided to stop looking at my data. At this point I just went by feel. My new goal was to keep a decent steady effort. I was trying to count the guys I passed in my age group. I came off the bike in 56:25. I thought I was in 5th place at the time. I figured out about half way into the run that I actually had the lead in the age group. In hindsight, I had the fastest bike split and that had put me onto the run course in 1st place. I was able to have a decent run and finished the 10k in 35:25. My overall time was 1:56:05 1st Masters(age 40+)/ 16th Overall. I had a great time racing with my Timex teammates and seeing Susanne Davis win the women's Masters division for the 2nd year in a row!