Just catchin everyone up.

So its been awhile since my last post, but I promise… the training is going strong.
Well, lately I’ve been starting to focus on my first half coming up in september and making sure to really put in the time to get the distance built up. My only goal for that day is to finish… But, as we get closer we ill take another look at those goals.

Other than that… training, eating, training some more. Speaking of which, just did a 5k out at Robious landing park where the I Love the Tavern sprint is going to be on Sunday and I clocked in around 20:16… but that includes the times I stopped… totally lost in the woods. haha. So, after running the course, I am sure that I can definetly break 20 mins on this run. It is through the woods, shaded, and no hills. The paved part has some low rollers, but nothing crazy. Well, time to eat some food. Im planning on a brick in the afternoon tomorrow after work. Just a short fast one. 18 mi on the bike, and 3 on the run. Going to try and simulate the race.

Cheers.

Yorktown Sprint Race report…

This past weekend was the Yorktown Sprint, a race which has become a regular for the season. It is a beautiful venue, with a swim in the salty York River, ride through historic Yorktown, and a brutal run along the waterfront. Overall I feel like I had a strong race, but did lose some time on the bike due to a rear brake rub mechanical issue.

650m Swim – 11:17 T1 -1:18
40k Bike- 29:55 T2- 0:50
5k Run- 21:11
Final Time – 1:04:30

All in all, I was happy with the race, strong bike and swim, but I faltered in the run. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that I had no hydration over the 1 hour sprint in the opressive heat. At 7am, race start, it was already 92 degrees. It was not a great day to lose my water bottle on mounting. I did get my first flying mount this time though. Oh well, PR’d this distance course, and took off a decent chunk of time from my SML time. Time to start gearing up for the Patriot in September… its gonna be a great summer.

HHHunt Powersprint Race Report.

Well, let me just come out and say it… today, I kicked ass.

A lot of times I find myself on the bike, running, or in the pool during training sessions just thinking, and hoping, that maybe this extra 50m, this extra 10mi, or this extra 6:15 mile will pay off. I’m really happy to say that it all has. Today I placed 2nd in my age group, and 20th overall out of over 400 people. I can’t even express how good I feel right now. Also, I gotta give a shout out to Disputanta. Cats in the Barn!! Also, congratulations to my best friend and training partner Joe who earned 1st in the AG, and 19th overall. Edged me out by 45ish seconds. Congratulations bud, you deserve it.

So, here’s the race report. It was a perfect day for a race; no wind, no rain, lots of sun, about 70-80 degrees. It was just about as perfect as you could ask for. I was seeded 100th, with an estimated swim time of 5:45. So, into the pool I jumped at Shady Grove YMCA. Actually swam faster than I thought I would, and got in the 300m at about 5:20 something. Beware the purple monster. Once I see the results posted I’ll post my splits and times. Ran out of the pool through T1, which went smoothly (no chains falling off or water bottle jettisons) and started off on the bike. The bike course was about as fast as you can get out of a rolling rural setting. I was extremely happy with my ride. I averaged 23.7 mph through the course and felt calm and under control the whole time. Like I was just out on a ride on a saturday morning. Stuck to my drinking routine of every 15mins, but skipped the gel for such a short course, and instead got 3 scoops of cytomax into my 3sports bottle. It was perfect. I didn’t drink very much, since I was too busy crushing people to notice. Well, that might be an exageration, but I didnt drink a lot. Coming into T2, I felt strong, sharp, and a little hungry. Grabbed a big swig of my cytomax, and I took off on the run. I had one goal once I got out of T2… run like the devil was chasing me. And I think I did. Over the 5k run course, I averaged 6:11, and finished with a run split of 19:15 (PR). What a race. I can’t wait for next year, and more importantly, next week and the Yorktown Sprint. This whole… triathlon thing. It’s pretty cool.
Thanks for reading… stay tuned for workout reports from this week as I gear up for Yorktown.
Cheers.

No one understands that you have given everything. You must give more. ~Antonio Porchia

Did you come here to kill, or did you come here to die?

Well, it has been awhile since my last post… but with graduation, graduation parties, and my trip to new york city, I havent had much time to write… but I have been training. Sorry to everyone who was hoping I wasn’t… I’m still going to be better than your best. So, that being said the training the past few weeks has been good with some solid rides, runs, and even some swimming ( I’m just as shocked as you). I’ll talk about a couple of key workouts. First, was my run through central park this past saturday. What a run! I hope New Yorkers realize how lucky they are to have such an amazing place to go running in. I mean, it was perfect. Rolling hills, long flat sections, plenty to look at and even more to eat afterwards. The run was a good 6.5 miles, and I kept a really solid 6:40 pace. Depending on how you look at it, I had a really good day for training. I just hope I can replicate the performance this sunday at the powersprint. Anyways, the highlight of this run was a foot race I got into at the end with a guy. He was wrapping up his run as I passed him, and I decided to look back over my shoulder to make sure I had gotten around him… well apparently he didnt like the fact that I passed him because he was right on my heels. We got into a dead sprint… I pulled ahead, then he pulled back, then I countered and pulled away. Luckily it was close to the end of my run too because after all that sprinting, I was feeling pretty lightheaded. Good workout, great day. A bagel and a bottle of gatorade never tasted so good after a run.

Yesterday I got in a good bike ride, about 30 miles averaging just over 20mph which I think was admirable since there was a pretty strong headwind blowing right on top of me. Great ride, really starting to see where the long months in the garage really are helping out.

Today was a swim/run day. Did a long 30 min swim at the YMCA. Again, no pain in the shoulder. I kept the swim around a 1:40 x 100m pace for the first 15 mins, slowed down to 2:00 x 100m and really worked on my stroke for the middle 10 mins, then back down to 1:40 x 100m for the last 5 mins. Had a 6x100m warmup, so all in all I think I did somewhere around 2500m. I dont know for sure though. After the swim, I came home, ate something really quick, then headed out on a short run. Wanting to work on speed, I decided to just run as hard as I could and see how long I could last at that pace. I made it 1.46 miles at about 5:40… but then I thought I was gonna die so I slowed my pace down to 6:40ish, so still clipping right along. Did 3.12 mi in 20:44, burned 507 calories with an avg hr in the 180’s. I think it was 183. Anyways, it was a great day. The high tomorrow is only supposed to be (gulp) 60. So, I think I might actually have to bust out my gloves for intervals tomorrow night.  Should be good… more ladder work with a tough run following.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt from a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910.

Hills seem to be the theme…

Well, what a crazy couple of days… lets go back to Saturday, because thats when it all began. Got up early to meet up with with my training partner, Joe, for a ride. I don’t think that either of us had a really clear idea what we were going to do, where we were going, or how fast we were gonna go to get there. But I’ll tell you this, I haven’t had a bike workout like that since the hell days inside the garage on our trainers. We had every aspect of riding… tempo, t-intervals, hills… it was an awesome ride. We did the Berry Farm ride as usual, then instead of turning left to head down that rode, we went straight past the farm, into an area which has some of the biggest hills in chesterfield county. These aren’t the mountains which we’ll be climbing soon around Charlottesville, but these hills are no joke. Huge grades, long, steep, and brutal. The first few big climbs slowed us down to around 15mph, but it felt like 2. On the way back, after a quick stop at the intersection for Genito, we took a long, low grade hill at 25mph. I lead the charge, and luckily had Joe pushing the pace in the back. We crushed that hill. Did some intervals on the way back into Woodlake, and ended the ride exhausted.

The previous thursday, we actually had a professional rider from Team Nature’s Path come in, Craig Dodson, and he talked to us about T-Intervals. Essentially they are 100% max watt intervals done for no more than 30 secons, with 3mins off in between. These are used to help “raise your bar”, or what I learned was your pain threshold. Craig… your t-intervals idea was awesome. And I noticed results the very next ride.

Monday, was a swim workout… nothing special. However I did do over 3000m for the first time since March; I did just about 3200m. It was a good workout, nothing to fast but I was able to keep my 100s down around 1:40-1:45 for the sets. So, I am seeing some improvement.

Today was the first nice day we’ve had in awhile, so I decided to use it as a huge day. I set out from Westcreek for a revised version of my 4 counties ride. It was still 4 counties, just a little bit shorter… still 52mi though. I remember why I love cycling, every time I do this ride. Next time I am bringing my camera to take pictures. The ride is very hilly, but I still managed to average just over 21mph, thanks to the big bombers where i was going close to 42mph! I know… and yes, it is scary. But, I felt stronger than I ever have today on the bike. I was racing up hills, hitting downhills fast, and keeping up the tempo on my straight and flats. Overall, a great ride.

After the ride, I took it easy that afternoon and just tried to get in some calories and fluid. To bad I can’t sit still for that long anymore. So, I laced up my trail running shoes and headed to Pocahontas State Park. Ended up running 4.5 miles, and did it in 33.40:18, so I managed to keep a 7.28 pace. Which is slower than I’d like for a road run, but Im happy with it for my first trail run, which had even more – you guessed it – hills.

What a great day. Tomorrow is intervals, so hopefully my legs will be recovered enough to keep up.

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.  ~José Ortega y Gassett

Thursday’s Workout

First off, let me say that it feels great not to be waking up at 4:30am on a saturday for a race for the first time in a month. That being said, I also haven’t had my first cup of coffee (the cool kids call it cof) so this could be an interesting entry.

So Thursday morning rolled around and I headed down to the pool to get in some distance. Still trying to recuperate the shoulder, so nothing to fast yet. Got in, and here is my set

1. Warmup – 1×600
2. Drills – [1×100 Finger Drag/Zipper, 1×100 Push and Glide]x3
3. Longset – 1000m (19:32 with an avg 100m of 1:40ish)
4. Speed work – 5×100, 5×50
5. Cooldown – 1×100 easy.

Good swim workout, getting in some really good quality in between the lane lines. I can’t wait for the water to warm up… I might just have to drive to the beach for some open water swimming. Then stay and sleep on the sand all afternoon.

After my swim, I came back home and ate some lunch, finished up my last college final (as an undergrad) and headed out on my run. Unfortunately, my foot pod died so I dont have any data on the run. I did however manage to run for about 45mins, so I think I covered around 6.5 miles. The run was really hilly, so it felt more like 10 miles. Over the flat sections I really tried to put into practice the quick cadence running style we practiced on Wednesday night. Its really nice, and actually feels better on my leg muscles over flat sections.

Took friday off due to weather, now the storms have subsided and I am planning on doing a long ride/run brick with Joe. Im thinking 50 mi on the bike, 6-8mi run. Gotta start working towards the Patriot; that 13 mile run is going to kill me.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.  ~Thomas Edison

Intervals Night

Phew, what a night! So I’m waiting for my water to boil, and I had the time to type… so this is gonna be short. Intervals were tonight, 6 intervals in total. Avg speed was 29mph. I was racing our team captain at one point and he said we got up around 32-33mph. We were flying.

After the ride (6 intervals totals about 24miles) we went on a 4 mile run. The first half was slow, between 7-7:30, and the second half was crazy fast – again with Moose and Pascal taking the lead – with the pace being more between 5:30 and 6:00, through the uphill section of the course! It was all out, intensity through the roof. Me and Joe hung on though, and really pushed it through the end of the run. Afterwards we did a fun run drill where we worked on form over short fast paced, high cadence sets. It hurt. It was fun. I’m hungry, so now its time to eat. I’ll try to add some reflection to my post tomorrow after my morning swim.

“What goes around comes around, just like a flip turn”.  ~Author Unknown

Good training days ahead…

Today I got up with the plan in mind to ride 40 miles. Well, mission accomplished. I got out the door around 9, a little later than I had hoped but whatever, and headed east. The ride started out with my usual route out of the city towards route 5, and then looped around Dorey Park for a great 40 miles. My ride went well, avg close to 22mph over the course which was rolling, fast, and had some big climbs particularly when leaving the city, and coming back in. For the ride I wanted to focus primarily on just going hard the whole ride; trying to simulate race speed and intensity.

That evening I met up with joe at the pool for a swim workout. Got in about 2500m or so, and unfortunately, my shoulder started to hurt again towards the end. I hope its not going to be an issue for the patriot. But no matter what, Im just going to keep on swimming and hope it works itself out. I would post the swim workout, but its not really that much to talk about. Warm up, drills, longset, speedset, cool down.

Great day completed with a celebration down at Capital to celebrate graduation. Tonight is intervals, so it will be another big workout day. Thursday I am planning on getting a good long run in during the morning because tonight will be a 5-6 mi “easy” run. But after what happened last time I’m sure it will turn into a foot race for the last few miles. The run Thursday will hopefully be around 10miles with maybe a ride in the afternoon. We’ll see how things go.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Aristotle

Swim/Run brick.

Ok, so a quick post because its late and I need to get some sleep for tomorrows ride. Today was a good day as far as working out went. After my exam, I headed to the pool for some long sets. I did a warm up of 600m, at 6x100m with 5 secs in between. After my warm up, I got going on my long set. I swam for 30mins, and did about 1500m. I wasn’t really counting, but was making sure my pace was just around 1:45ish. After the long set, I did some stroke drills and finished up with a 5×100 time trial work. All in all it was prolly around 2500-3000m

After the swim workout I laced up the shoes and headed out on a run. I really wanted to push it and saw that early on during the run. The hills got to me, through the main street climb, and kept my pace around 7. The run totaled just over 5 miles, and I felt really strong after finishing it up. max pace was aroun 5:50. Im planning on adding some speed work throughout the runs this month to hopefully avoid hitting a plateau on my tempo. For the patriot I am hoping to keep a pace under 7mins, but more around 6:40.

Tomorrow morning Im getting up to do a 40 mile ride, followed by a swim workout later that afternoon with Joe.

Race Report from SML, and the plan for May-June.

So, the beginning of the season is going well, and this Saturday was the first open water swim of the season. I went into it knowing that I wasn’t as prepared as I had hoped to be for swimming, but after my shoulder started to get sore from 4000m days in the pool, I had decided to back it off a bit and do more bike/run focus over the month. Anyways, no excuses, because despite the lack of swim focus over the past month, I managed to stay in the middle of the pack during the swim.

So, here’s the race report… It was a gorgeous day, light breeze maybe 5-7mph, sunny and around 80 degrees at race time. What a great day for a race. The water, which I expected to be glassy and calm, was pretty choppy; a situation not helped out by the fact that the state park troopers were trolling around with at least 5 boats causing some serious wake. But, the gun went off and into the water I went. I swam well the first 300-400m, after rounding the first buoy, I came up to spot and noticed that I was way off course. So, I had to stop for a second to plot out my new course. I took it, and swam in the rest of the way without losing heading for the most part. I swam a little slower than my goal, but I think that by Yorktown (june 9) I will have regained a lot of my speed in the water. Other than that, good swim in cold water with a good luck into what I need to work on.

Came into T1 and thats when things sort of fell apart for me. This was my first race using a wetsuit and it definetly showed in T1. It took forever to get out of it, and then it took even longer to get going on the bike. It started out with a steep start, my first. And I took the advice of another rider and ran my bike to the top of a hill. When I went to get on the bike, my chain fell off. I paniced and instead of just walking my chain back on with my granny gear, I got off my bike and put it back on by hand. This took a couple of minutes. During this whole situation, I also managed to knock my water bottle out. Something I failed to notice until I got riding… 15 miles without water after spending 18 mins in the water was not good. And I noticed the effects of not having proper nutrition when coming back in from the ride. There was a steep grade around mile 10 which kicked my butt. I felt like I was going to cramp up the whole climb. I decided that it was just time to suck it up and climb. I averaged just over 21mph, and made up a lot of time on the bike.

Coming into T2 was smooth and I took complete advantage of the adrenaline rush which I had from the craziness that was T1. I came into T1 got the gear on, and hit the ground running… fast. I passed 3 people in the first 1/2 mile on the run, and according to my foot pod I was averaging around 5:50 the first part of the run. After my head cleared up, I slowed my pace down to a manageable speed and held a solid 6:30 pace the rest of the run, with a 6 min pace the last mile.

Finish time was 1:18:11. Not to bad, considering the day, and good enough for 77th overall out of 450+ entries.

Over the next month I am going to focus on some things…

1. Swimming… I can handle the distance (750m) I just want to get my times down. I think that 100m intervals and longer 500m intervals will do this. I’ll also mix in some 1500 long sets.
2. Bike/run transition. I am completely obsessed with getting my T times down, and learning how to come out of Transition like the pros. Race paced from the first step
3. Flying bike starts. Something I have been meaning to learn to do as well as shoe-less dismounts.
4. Core exercises. I need to firm up my midsection; something which will benefit me in all three disciplines.

I feel like I am getting stronger on the bike, and gaining more speed on the run, especially coming off the bike. I do like the way the season is going so far, and hope to keep up the good work.

Determine never to be idle…It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
~Thomas Jefferson