hyvee

I waited to sign up for Hy-vee triathlon until I new I could actually run.  But I waited a little too long and unfortunately it has filled up.  That is what I get for waiting, which is not something you can do in the triathlon world, where races sometimes fill up 6 months in advance (Its not as bad as Ironman races, which cost nearly 500 dollars and you have to sign up a year in advance!  Hell, I don't even know what I'll be doing in a year).  Since I am a poor graduate student, I don't like forking over mounds of money only to end up injured/miss the entire season.  

The last few days have been rather gloomy; the cold, windy, and rainy days have drained my motivation, and this damn sickness that has lingered on all week isn't helping.  The Buffalo triathlon is on Sunday morning which I am really excited about.  It will be the longest swim I have done in a tri and the first real olympic distance that I have raced.  The water is going to be freezing so I'm a little concerned about having a shortsleeve wetsuit.  

sick and sore

It is probably good to have both a sickness and muscle soreness at the same time, as they both set you back in your training.  The really concerning thing is the level of muscle tightness even after two days of racing.  I expected to have a lot due to shocking my body by running again, and even more, by having to run two 5k's in the race.  But it is obvious my running muscles haven't been used in a while.  I can't even walk normally and getting up and down stairs leaves me looking older than most people's grandparents.  I guess that is what I get for racing.  Lets just hope I miraculously wake up tomorrow feeling great.

Apple Duathlon

The racing season kicked off and left me feeling positive about where the season is headed.  Unfortunately I was the first guy to miss the prize money.  The race started out as expected; I figured Thompson, Hauck, Miller, and Grossinger would take out the run at around 5:05 mile pace.  I forced myself to hold back (it was really hard to let those guys run away) and went with the second pack, including my brother Eric, Cohen, Shelp, and Milner.  I didn't get our first mile split but it was probably around 5:15.  It felt weird to run fast again, but I was glad that it felt smooth and easy.  Eric and I picked the pace up at the end, made up some ground on a few guys, and finished the first 5k feeling strong (and fortunately having no pain in my hip or achilles) in 16:19.  Hauck and Thompson held strong to finish in 15:40ish.  After a not surprisingly slow first transition (I got beat out of transition by 3 guys that I beat into transition), I got off to a good pace on the bike.  It started out on a hill and there was a cluster of 5 guys.  Since I put my shoes on before getting on the bike, I passed them all right away even though I knew it would only be for a few seconds...The two pro's Cohen and Shelp are strong bikers and passed me about a mile later.  Milner went past shortly after them.  Fortunately, that was the last time I got passed on the bike!  The first 13 miles of the 20.4ish mile bike were really solid and I felt really good.  I held a few of the guys ahead of me in sight for the first half hour, caught one guy, and was averaging 25.5 mph.  The wind picked up alot and the last 7 miles were tough.  I caught up to Hauck (who was dealing with a mechanical problem) and got off the bike in 6th place, averaging 23.5 mph for the bike split.  I was successful in getting my feet out of the shoes while still riding and the first time I tried it was yesterday!  I finally bought some specific triathlon shoes (Shimano TR50) which feel great.  My second transition was pretty good, and I got my racing flats on without ripping the stitches out of my thumb.  I'm usually excited for this part of the race because the run is generally my strength.  But my calves were a rock from the first run and my running fitness is...well...not good.  I got a glimpse of a guy or two up the road from me so I attempted to run them down.  There is prize money for the top 5, with the 5th place guy getting 200 dollars!  Plenty of reason to push the pace.  I went through the first mile at a fast clip but I was still at least a minute down from the next guy.  The fatigue was hitting me pretty hard at this point and my legs were not feeling so hot.  It was probably a good thing that I was out of touch with the next guy because it would make losing 5th place by a small margin a lot harder.  I tried to race through to the end as though someone was right in front of me but my pace slowed in the final stretch.  I was surprised to see that I had the second fastest closing 5k behind Thompson.  Hauck came in 20 or so seconds back from me and Eric was a minute after that.  Eric has been sick this week and had a final yesterday so he was a little sleep deprived.  And I know he isn't happy with his running fitness/injuries either.

Top 5 guys were: Thompson, Cohen, Shelp, Grossinger, Milner, respectively.  Grossinger was the top amateur.  

So the good things from today: 1) my running ability hasn't left me as bad as I thought it would so I'm confident that it will get back up there with more races in the coming weeks.  The opening 5k didn't feel taxing which is even more reassuring.  I just gotta stay healthy!  Should have learned to be more patient in college...  2)I feel strong on the bike, although I faded pretty badly at the end.  I know my cycling has improved a lot since last year, regardless of what the results showed.  It will just take a few weeks of racing again to start to see the speed...hopefully

kicking off the season

Tomorrow is my first race of the season, and my first race since Brewhouse tri last August!  (I did run a 3k the first week of January, but it was a random race and I was out of shape.  Surprisingly, didn't run too bad.)  I have no idea what to expect for the race.  My cycling seems to be really strong right now compared to last year, but after looking through my running log, I have done less than 5 runs since the first week of August at a pace under 6 min per mile which is not even fast!  And the last was the 3k 5 months ago...My training was similar last year so I'm hoping to feel pretty good, but I have no intention on taking it out with the leaders.  Its not my place at this point and I don't want to aggravate my heel.  I have even been asking myself if I can still be considered a "runner".  Since college, I have yet to put in consistent running and have only touched a track once in the last two years.  I think I have taken the saying "focus on your weakness" to an extreme by blowing off the run completely to focus on cycling.  But I have faith that my legs will come around like they did last summer but it may take a few weeks to remember what a 5:15 mile feels like...

Better get to bed, 5 am wake up will not be fun. 

to be 25, with a few battle wounds

I should probably go back to 24 because 25 hasn't started off that well.  Not sure where my mind is, most likely on summer shutdown mode.  I was attempting to make lunch today but only got to slicing the bread.  Then the knife decided to slice my thumb.  It was a pretty deep cut so I headed into lakeview clinic and tried to convince the doc to let me stitch it up myself.   It didn't work, but at least I didn't cut the tendon.  Fortunately, the race on Saturday is a duathlon so I don't have to swim.  I'm going to go sit outside now and contemplate what life was like when I was young and invisible.

"Training Camp" on the North Shore

Last weekend I headed up to my cabin on the north shore of MN for some chilling and cycling.  The crew consisted of Sam, Peder, and Havey, all former college teammates.  My brother, Eric and his girlfriend Megan met up with us the next day.  Although I wasn't able to swim (did run a few miles finally), I got in some good riding on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  

Friday started out with a morning tempo run for the other three guys, out 30 min and back in around 24ish for Peder.  I put in 2 miles.  Got a little ice bathing in at the mouth of the Temperance river.  The water is still on the 'too damn cold' side as my foot turned purple in 3 minutes.  Sam and I road inland on a nice road with little traffic and rolling hills.  We put in about 39 miles and got poured on for the last 45 minutes.  The rest of the night consisted of grilling and relaxing by a bonfire right off the shore of lake superior.  

Saturday was our hard bike workout day.  Eric, Sam, and I left from my cabin and traveled down 61, a highway paralleling Lake Superior.  It is not the best road to bike on due to narrow shoulders and alot of cracks, but we needed a good 30 minutes of warmup before attacking the workout and hills.  20 minutes in Sam had a crash on a pretty nasty crack in the road.  Luckily he made out with very little road rash and the road was clear of traffic at the time.  Things could have been alot worse...We reached the bottom of the 1.8ish mile hill that has yet to be named and started our 3 hill repeats.  Then we cruised for 20 minutes and started a tempo ride.  We road 15 minutes out, which had a gradual uphill and a headwind.  For a point of reference, we turned around and made it back in 7:40 and averaged 35 mph.  We must have looked good because a car passed us and took a picture.  The last third of the tempo ride we averaged around 26 miles an hour on more rolling hills.  All in all we did nearly 30 minutes of hill climbing and 33 minutes of tempo riding, which is the longest bike workout I have ever done, outside of races.  Sam put in another run in the afternoon, Eric studied (he still has a month left of his first year of med school) and I went hiking with the other guys.  More bonfires, hot-tubbing and some beer in the evening.

Sunday was an easy 34 miles and a 4 mile run and Peder and Havey ran 14 miles.

I'll post pictures when Havey gets them to me.  

On another note, I hit a quarter century of life today.  Better get a pool workout in now since I haven't done one for awhile...

It's a rough life

Just got back from a massage, and wow...if that isn't relaxing I don't know what is.  The focus was primarily on my calves and hamstrings and a little bit on my back and right deltoid.  At any rate, I recommend getting a massage.  They will put you to sleep and leave you feeling refreshed.

I don't even feel like I had a hard bike ride this morning.  I'm hoping that this will help with my achilles/plantar pain.  We'll see in the coming days.  Now I just need to recruit some people to massage my legs everyday.  Anyone?

a little Deja Vu

Summer officially started yesterday.  And while it is a great feeling, I am left with a bittersweet taste; I woke up on Wednesday with a shooting pain in my achilles and plantar region of the foot.  Usually I would get one of these injuries from running, but since I am barely running and not doing any workouts, it seemed a little surprising.  I pondered over the injury alot on the ride back to Waconia last night.  I couldn't elicit any pain on pressure, and yet certain positions in my body cause the pain to shoot down.  I am thinking it is either a pinched nerve in my leg or a back problem, probably from using the tri bike.  As weird as it is, it seems like the most plausible explanation, yet I'm left without any real idea what to do to get better.   So with my typical luck, I start the season on a bit of a question mark.  I can't run, I don't know if I can bike, and I'm too pissed to swim (at least today).  My mind keeps shooting back to last summer...a week after competing the first race of the year, I rolled my ankle completely over on a rock.  I had to stumble the two miles back home, which didn't help either.  By that time, it had swelled to a grapefruit and appeared to be broken.  At least that is what my "optimistic" dad and the ER doc thought.  Luckily it wasn't, but it was put in a cast for 5 days.  So after taking a week off working out at the start of the racing season, and 4 weeks entirely off running, I thought the season would be a waste.  But I still raced well upon return and ran alot better than I expected.  My first run back, aside from 2 minutes the day before, was the Waconia triathlon where I managed a top three run split.  I was too cautious so I never got back into running last summer besides 5-10 miles a week.  I'm hopeful that thoughts of last summer can keep me optimistic as I get healthy, and at some point, get in racing shape.  And even if it is delayed, I didn't really start racing until the end of June last year.  Plenty of time...

taste of summer

After having the neuro shelf exam on Friday, and our neuro final exam today, I'm ready for summer!  250 neuro questions in two tests is alot of fun...One more final on Friday but this week should be pretty relaxing (mentally at least).  I had a low volume training week last week and the plan is to hit these next three weeks hard, in terms of volume and intensity.  By then I should be good and worn out for my first race, the Apple Duathlon, at the end of this training stretch.  The first race back is always a little intimidating; I'm the kinda guy who likes to race myself into shape so I wont be expecting anything great, especially since I haven't done a running "workout" since last fall (besides a random track meet in January that I ran for some odd reason...).  But my running came around last summer just from bike training so I'm banking on that again.  

I started the week on a good note, putting in a swim this afternoon after the final, followed by a 45 mile bike ride that included 3x5.5 miles at threshold pace.  The threshold pieces had a few hard climbs, but it was mostly flat (and windy!).  The third rep was the fastest and felt the easiest.  My speedometer is broken, but I have the segments measured out.  Ended up averaging 24.75 mph (did  the 16.5 miles in just under 40 min).  Can't complain with that for very little threshold work!  Once I get my "aero-ness" back and a few races under me, I think I'll be making some nice improvements on the bike this season.