It's Been A While

I sit here on my couch, (well half of it is mine, the other half belongs to my roommate) with a bag of frozen broccoli under my left ankle and one of parisian style veggies on top. Yep, the offseason is over, and along with its demise comes those aches and pains that are a result of good, solid training. It's not that I became a complete slob over the last month or so but I wasn't following a structured program until a few weeks ago. Last week is when I regard my training as having begun in earnest. I got in 5 swims, 3 bike rides, (if you include spinning) 2 runs and 2 strength training sessions. It doesn't sound like much but the increased swimming is especially wearing me down. I just haven't swam consistently in so long that its going to take some time to get my feel for the water again.

Today I swam a 14:30 1000yd time trial in the pool. Which isn't stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but this tired old body will take it for now.

Finals are next week with my first one tomorrow. I've studied about an hour for the one tomorrow and am off to the library to put in a couple more hours before bed time. I foresee many hours with the books this weekend as I have four finals next week.

Well the it's been 10 minutes and the frozen veggies are melting so I'm off to shower and shave (well, not shave, in fact there has been a considerable amount of hair growth on my legs this winter that leaves many of my cycling and tri buddies somewhat repulsed) before trekking off to the library. Good night all.

IT'S THE OFFSEASON BABY!!

Yes, the offseason is indeed here, and I have welcomed it with open arms. It was with relief that I finished my last race of my first year of cross country on Saturday. It was a dismal performance on my part, either my slowest or second slowest time this year. It's been a rough season for me, fun but rough. I'm more than ready to take some time off... and that's exactly what I've been doing.

Since the race on Saturday I have done my best to live as unhealthy a life as I know how. Unfortunately, my years of embracing an active lifestyle have made it extremely difficult for me to completely abstain from ALL forms of exercise. I have done a bit better in the nutrition category, eating foods that utterly horrify and repulse me. But then I casually observe other American going about their daily eating habits and realize that I can't even begun rival some of these people when it comes to ingesting horrible foods.

I gaze into my pantry and see ingredients that have not yet been present on any food labels this semester. Toxic words like: "Hydrogenate ____ oil," "artificial flavoring/color," "enriched flour," and the worst, highly feared, everly abundant- HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. Egads! I honestly feel guilty as I stand in the checkout line at the grocery store, small bag of snickers in my hand, or with a box of CHEEZ-IT's hidden in my basket. Saturday, after the race I ate at McDonalds for the first time in... years? (This was where the whole team ate though and because the food was free I didn't have much choice.) I even stopped by a donut shop Sunday morning.

And yet, despite the initial satisfaction of all these sugary foods I find myself strangely craving some good, leafy green vegetables. As I sit typing on this computer my mind envisions the carrots in the refrigerator just as often as the twizzlers in the cupboard. It's only been three days and I'm not sure how much longer I can stick to this regimen of candy and processed foods. I think I'm gonna go eat a piece of lettuce...

32

32 degrees, A.K.A. freezing. Thats how cold it was at 7:00 AM, C.S.T. here in Tyler, Tx when we began practice this morning. You might as well tell a Texan its going to be -20, the reaction would probably be the same.

In Texas, when we start hearing numbers in the 30's we frantically begin digging through our closets to find those jackets, sweaters, and scarves that we boxed up and stored SOMEWHERE, what seems like eons ago.

If there was water here it would be frozen, and if it was frozen we probably would have school canceled. If it's below freezing and there is ANY frozen moisture whatsoever, be it from sprinklers or dirty dishwater, that is usually enough to close down the whole city. In Texas.

Us runners in Texas, (or triathlete as I prefer to call myself) dread these kind of temperatures. It numbs the fingers, chills the toes and sears the cheeks and eyelashes. There is no escape from these harsh conditions when you venture out on to the lonely roads as sun is still peeking above the horizon.

Yes, these are all the things I thought as I made my way to the fitness center to begin practice this morning. Luckily, we were running inside.

Victimized

I went to a halloween costume party last night. "But halloween is still a week away" you might wonder. Well I know that, and so does the rest of the XC team. The problem is that on halloween the entire UT Tyler Cross Country team will be in Seguin, Tx preparing to race in the Conference meet. So we had a little get together last night so that we wouldn't miss out on America's favorite candy-consuming holiday.

Note: There was a negligable amount of candy present at this gathering but an abundance of vegetables and gatorade.

I was at a loss as to what my costume should be until I stopped by the halloween store Saturday afternoon and got some ideas...



Shark Attack!




Head wound.



Road rash? From a shark?


I claimed that I was just a generic "victim" but everyone insisted I had been attacked by a shark after reading my shirt. Honest, the shark attack idea never occured to me until people began commenting on it. Oh well, whatever works.

You Can Call Me an Idiot

:Edit: I had gotten blood work done a week or so prior and noticed certain levels were higher than they should be but had not idea what BUN/CREAT, AST, PHO, or NEUTROPHIL meant. I wisely decided to put the results in more knowledgable hands than mine and mailed them off to Shelly ASAP.

Here is an excerpt from the lengthy email she sent me:
High BUN:
A blood urea nitrogen (BUN) test measures the amount of nitrogen in your blood that comes from the waste product urea. Urea is made when protein is broken down in your body. Urea is made in the liver and passed out of your body in the urine.
A BUN test is done to see how well your kidneys are working. If your kidneys are not able to remove urea from the blood normally, your BUN level rises. Heart failure, dehydration, or a diet high in protein can also make your BUN level higher.
High BUN/CREAT RATIO
Creatine levels are fine so I don’t suspect a problem with your kidneys. However, I do suspect dehydration as it generally causes BUN levels to rise more than creatine levels. Thus a high BUN:creatine ratio. Sustained Chronic Dehydration can cause a compromise in kidney function. Athletes can and do get to this point (I have unfortunately) and it is generally results in a very painful trip to the ER. Bottom line… DRINK!

There was a bunch more stuff about neutrophils, low phosphorous, and aspartate aminotransferase or AST which is a liver enzyme. I had to read the email 3-4 times to begin to get a grasp of what she was saying. The overwhelming feeling that washed over me (no pun intended) as I read this email was one of relief. Finally I knew what was wrong with me! This was a fairly simple fix that required me to simply drink more fluids.

The second thing I was struck by was my stupidity. How could I forget to drink water! I was putting a lot of time and focus into ensuring I was fueling my body correctly following workouts, eating organic and un-processed foods, getting the right balance of carbs to protein to fat to vitamins and minerals. But in doing so I neglected to remember the most basic aspect of nutrition- water. Our bodies need water. Water plays a vital role in almost every reaction and process that occurs in our bodies. And somehow, I had forgotten to drink it; to the point that I had become chronically dehydrated.

6 days later finds me doing my best to re saturate my body with H20 while trying to ward off the possibility hyponatremia. Overall though I am feeling much better. I feel great in fact! I think that I've been somewhere between mildly and severely dehydrated for a good portion of this year as I find myself abounding with energy and vitality. So this is what "normal" feels like! I have a little extra bounce in my step, a song in my head, a swing in my arms- that hasn't been there for a while. I'd forgotten what it felt like to feel good.

I'm still running like crap. Maybe even worse than before. My legs below the knees seem to be in a state of chronic "tightness." My left side especially is giving me severe problems, running intervals at the track yesterday my left ankle, shin, achilles and foot were aching so bad it hurt to stop. Yes, it was actually worse when I'd stop and try to stretch it out. I'm struggling to maintain a pace that dips below 5:50/mile, but feel great and energized as I sprint the length of a soccer field. I think the speed and fitness is there, somewhere, it just needs to be uncovered.

I found out that I must make top 7 on our team at conference on November 1st to qualify for regionals two weeks later. Probably not going to happen as 4th-7th on the team are all running well right now. Conference will be my last XC race of this season. I should be disappointed but instead I'm looking forward to the future. Soon it will be time to start preparing for tri season again. Starting in January I plan to completely immerse (again no pun intended) myself in swimming. Collegiate Nationals is April 18th in Lubbock, Tx. I plan to be ready, and ready to go fast.

A Toast to 08

Sigh. I've been reflecting a lot these past few days. Even more so after last Thursday when the top 7 guys on the XC team left to go to pre-nationals in Indiana. Yup, the weekend before in Abilene I was, "Number 8" as I have begin to refer to myself. I was pretty disappointed at first but I still have another chance to make the team to Nationals at conference and regionals which are coming up in November. I think its been taking my body a lot longer to adjust to running 50-60 miles a week, my ankles/achilles/feet have been a horrible nuisance these last few weeks. Sometimes their fine and other times they'll ache and hurt so bad it hurts to walk.

My lower leg issues and failure to make the "A" team have prompted some of these "moments of reflections" along with a massive fluctuation in my energy levels and motivation. I'm not sure what my problem is and I've been pretty discouraged the last couple weeks. So I started thinking about the whole season and what I've accomplished.

I accomplished all the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the season. Qualified for Sprint Worlds again, broke 18 minutes off the bike, recorded a top 10 finish at Nationals (And Worlds). In fact, I didn't finish outside the top 10 all season and recorded a couple overall wins to boot. Here's a quick rundown of my results.

03/08 Athens YMCA Sprint Triathlon- 3rd overall
3/29 Lonestar Sprint Triathlon- 4th overall
04/20- USAT Worlds Qualifier in Alabama - 7th overall (I think) 2nd overall
04/27- Mckinney Triathlon- 1st overall. - And on my birthday too!
05/25- Capitol of Texas Sprint- 2nd Overall
06/06- Sprint World Championships- 8th 16-19. (3rd American) I NEVER want to swim in 51 degree water again!
07/06- HOT Tri- 1st overall- Though there was a huge mix up with the course and I believe I really deserved 2nd.
08/09- USAT Junior ITU National Championships- 7th overall.

Along with all the tri's I did 10-15 bike races, winning a few of them and getting enough starts to upgrade to a 4.

Looking back I am nothing but pleased with my season. I was very consistent and continued to improve as the season progressed. I had a number of breakthrough's in my run and improved a little on my poor swim. All the hard work paid off and it was well worth it.

It's been long though. Since January my training has been focused and pretty intense. First with the goal of qualifying for worlds, then performing well there, then getting ready to race some draft-legal tri's which ended up being just nationals, but I recorded a solid performance there. This spring was tough. I was training 15-20 hrs/week, working 15-20 hrs/week, and taking 16 hours of classes. There were many mornings in January, February, March, and April where I left the house at 5:30 am and didn't get back until close to 11 pm. Many days I didn't want to train, many times I was so tired at the end of the day but had one last swim or run to get in. But it paid off, I had a fantastic year and took some huge leaps forward with my training and performance.

I can't thank my coach, Shelly enough for how far she has taken me in the last year. Last year at nationals I finished 39th and couldn't run sub 6:30 minute miles off the bike. Now it's a bad race if I'm not running close to, or below 5:30's. She has taught me a lot about training, recovery, and nutrition. I'm excited to be on an awesome team- IconOne Multisport. And looking forward to the future.

For now though, I'm ready to be done. I'm enjoying cross country but its getting to be more of a struggle. Mentally, physically, emotionally. I'm ready for a break. Or, the "offseason" as we call it. Thats not to say I want to stop working out. Quite the opposite in fact. But I want to take a break from structered training. I'm ready to bike 4 hours because I feel like it, run 15 miles because I want to. I want to go mountain biking, trail running, camping, backpacking, rockclimbing. i want to stay up late, eat bad foods and not feel guilty, sleep in when I feel like, or get up at 5 am because I want to run before the Saturday morning group ride.

So here's to 2008, and whatever may come in 09.

On the News

The local Channel 19 news team came out yesterday to recognize the UT Tyler Cross Country team as being the "team of the week." Whatever that means. Watch the short, cheesy, somewhat exaggerated clip here.

A Present from the Postman

Got some cool stuff in the mail today. (Finally) After spending Friday afternoon desperately trying to track down my shipment of shoes in hopes that I would be able to use the spike's I had ordered for Saturday's race I had to resign myself to one more race in shoes that were a full size too small. It went alright though. I ran 28:35 for the 8k course which was a big improvement and shoes that I am slowly adjusting to this big increase in running mileage.

Anyhow, the shoes finally arrived today!


These would be the new race spikes. The Nike Zoom Forever XC. Pretty sweet looking, I think.

And even more sweet looking...



I wanted a pair of lighter weight trainers and these Nike Air Zoom Hayward +3's should do the job nicely. Obviously inspired prefontain and the University of Oregon these shoes go back to the grassroot days of runnning. In fact the tongue of the shoe even has this inscribed on it- "Designed from Steve Prefontaine's actual drawing and what he wanted in a training shoe." Pretty ballin if you ask me. I'm almost scared to run in them, for fear I'd mar their gorgeous luster.

In other news I now have cable for the first time in my life and an Anatomy and Physiology lab exam tomorrow. If anyone out there knows what pseudostratified cuboidal epithelial cells look like would you please let me know?

Home meet

Here are a few pictures from our home cross country meet. I'm the guy with the red socks.

Life in Tyler

I don't know what happened to me the last month, just didn't feel like posting I guess. I'm out in Tyler, Tx now. Attending the University of Texas at Tyler. Life is good, it's a lot of fun being "on my own" so to speak. Running is going pretty well. The switch from a triathlon focus to a running focus hasn't come easy, lots of aches and pains along the way but its been fun. Last week I ran the most I ever have in my life- 59 miles in 6 days. Had a couple really solid workouts but my legs shins and achilles tendons were definitely feeling it by Saturday. So in the face of an oncoming hurricane Ike I ran an easy 9 miles at the lake with my friend Jess. Why, you may ask, did I not go through "extra mile" to reach 10 miles and 60 for the week? Well... I'm not sure, I just didn't feel like.

School is going pretty well as I haven't flunked anything yet. Of course I've only had 1 test and a couple quizzes, the worst is yet to come. If I can only remember where stratified cuboidal cells are located, the sample variance formula, and what the heck Z score equals I should be able to finish out the semester with a 4.0. Thats the goal anyways.

Sorry for the short update but we've got repeat miles at the track tomorrow. 5-8 repeats at tempo pace with 1' recovery. Can't wait.

A Slow Week at Home

What's this? Two posts in the same week? Yes it's true, boredom has led me to provide another update on my training chronicles and any other matters of interest in my life. Well if it's a training update your looking for I am sorry to disappoint you, for I haven't been training much at all this week. Essentially I've just done "what I feel like." Which, on some occasions, has been nothing at all. However here is a quick outline of what I've done since the race last Saturday.

Sunday- Easy 1.5 hr bike ride with Travis and Hunter. We were fortunate enough to meet the wife of the president of USA Cycling. Here husband was in Beijing already and she was leaving to join him in a few days. Lay around the rest of the day then a :40 easy run that evening.

Monday- 1 hr run with 3xhill repeats each at 3:20-3:30 long. This was with Hunter and we were sucking wind at about 7500 ft.

Tuesday- Back home and I did nothing but lay around the house, make donuts, eat donuts and numerous other food items that left me completely disgusted with myself by the end of the day.

Wednesday- 2.5 hrs on the bike with a :30 run in the middle there. I was planning to run more but felt really lousy when I tried to pick up the intensity so I cut it short.

Thursday- Another 2 hrs easy on the bike.
:50 swim with the old masters group I used to teach.
Its definitely taking me a little bit of time to get used to this Texas heat again. And this week has been mild so far. I think racing at altitude is taking me some time to recover as well. I've just felt kind of tired and slow all week.

Today (Friday)- 90 min run at white rock lake. Felt alright and a thunderstorm kept the temps down so that was nice.

Essentially I've been sleeping a lot, training a little, and watching the Olympics for about 4-5hrs every night. This week alone I think I've watched more TV then in the last 2 yrs combined. Theoretically I should be packing and getting ready to move out Monday but... there's always time for that kind of thing later...

Colorado Rocky Mountain High

A race report from Junior Triathlon National Championships in Colorado Springs Colorado.

I was staying at our Icon One Multisport team house which had been rented by an awesome father on the team who's 11 year old son was competing in the youth 11-12 race. The house was in an awesome spot in Monument, CO but about 35min from the race site which was the only bad part. At the house was Mason(11 year old), 2 youth elites- Daniel and Hunter, and 2 Junior elites- me and Travis. Friday afternoon we went to the Olympic Training Center for our packet pick-up and pre-race meeting. It was a pretty decent goody bag with a nice shirt and a pretty cool hat.

Race morning did not dawn so early as the Junior mens race wasn't until 2pm. However check in was from 8-9:30 for everyone so Hunter, Daniel, Travis and I headed down early to check in. After we checked in we weren't allowed back in transition until during the actual race so we had to make sure everything was right the first time. Travis and I then headed back to the house to relax and watch the Olympics before our race.

In the meantime the youth elite raced and Icon One represented well. We put 2 guys in the top 10 and our next 2 were top 20!

Travis and I arrived back at race site just as the Junior elite females were going off. We had 3 girls representing Icon One and all of them did awesome! Kate won the National Championships with a killer run split, Alex was 6th, and Kailand was 15th. Wat to go girls!

Ok now on to our race. I did a warm up run with Travis and was absolutely shocked at how good my legs felt. They were loose and ready to go! A quick spin on the trainer and then I jumped in the lake for a wim warm up. About 200m into my warm up they called all the athletes out of the water because of lightening. About 1:40 we started lining up for the start in order of our number. I was #36 out of about 50. No sooner were we lined up, primed and ready, set to go, then they notified us that the race was being delayed because of the lightening. Their best guess was 30-45min.

Everyone crowded into the beach house and sat around stretching, listening to music, drinking, eating, or just thinking. I put some sweats on to stay warm and wandered outside where it was a little less crowded. Around 2:45 they told everyone we could get in and get a swim warm-up in and I quickly got my cap and goggles and headed to the water. The water was a bit chillier the second time around but still non-wetsuit legal at about 70 degrees. Lined up again they announced the top 15 in the country by name then quickly called off the rest of us as we ran to grab a spot on the line. I was about in the middle and when the whistle went off ran and dove into the water.

I didn't get beat up too bad and thought my swim was going ok until I came out of the water for the second loop and saw a LOT of people ahead of me. The second lap was pure survival as I was definitely feeling the altitude (6000ft) and lack of swim fitness. I did have a couple guys to draft off of the second lap and that helped. Out of the water I heard people yell that we were 3min down which was not good. T1 was also very empty of bikes which was not a good sign either. Oh well, I knew I wasn't a great swimmer and just had to put my head down and pedal now. Out on the bike I formed a group with 2 other guys and we began to HAUL. There were a few other riders who were with us for a while and most of them didn't know a thing about pacelining. Me and a guy named Stephen, who I knew from Hamburg last year where trying to get people organized and it worked ok. Stephen, me, and this 3rd guy were by far the most experienced cyclists and we were making up some good time on the rest of the field.

The bike course was 4 loops and technical with 10 corners per lap including a 180 degree turn. Our group of 3 was riding through the field, picking up riders, then dropping them when they couldn't hang on. I came off the bike in the top 15 with one of the fastest bike splits of the day.

I blasted through T2 and out onto the run were I began reeling in a few other runners. Some people were definitely feeling the effects of altitude and though I didn't feel stellar I was still running strong. Travis was about 15-20 seconds ahead of me and I was gaining on him a little bit at a time even as we both caught and passed other runners. Going into lap 2 I had moved myself into 7th spot and that was where I was destined to stay. I closed to within about 8 seconds of Travis but couldn't get closer and he pulled away some more on the 2nd lap. I held on strong to cross the line in 7th spot!

All in all I am super happy with my race. I came out of the water in 37th and scratched and clawed my way into 7th! Racing at altitude was tough as I never could kick it into that extra gear both on the swim and run. I was stuck in just trying to hold my pace as I got more and more tired. Though I'm happy with my performance I now am fully resigned to the fact that I HAVE to get my swim down. There's no other option. If I could have been 1-2min faster on the swim I would have been contending for a podium spot. And next year if I want to do any U23 racing I won't be able to bike my way through everyone like I did. It was a great race, I'm super stoked about next year, and now I get to focus all my energy on cross country before going into a hardcore swim block this fall.

Thanks to Talbot for these pictures.

Back Home, Briefly

Well here I am back from my trip to Maine and in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex for approximately 28 hours before I fly out to Colorado Springs. The Maine trip was an awesome experience. It was a mixture of training camp + outdoor adventure trip and I had a lot of fun getting to do some activities I've never done, or hadn't done in a while. The trip included:

-a 3 day canoeing trip on the St. Croix river. I have quite a bit of canoeing experience but this was little different because we were on a river with quite a few small rapids. This broke up the paddling and made it a lot of fun. We were officially "camping" but it was the laziest camping I've ever done. The guides did everything for us including building fires, cooking meals, clean up, setting up rainfly's, and hauling our gear from camp to camp. About the only thing I did was paddle the canoe and spoon the food into my mouth. We did run everymorning on the trip and I had some fun swimming upstream in the river. It was cool how you could be moving up and then shift over slightly into a stronger current and all of a sudden you were getting pushed downstream. Very cool.

-Sea kayaking and kayak relay races. These were on 2 seperate days but were both a lot of fun.

-Whale watching. This was a little lame but we did see a whale!

-6 mile hike. It was nice not having 60lbs on my back for once during a hike!

-Lighthouse tour and standing at most easternly point of the U.S.

-Lobster boat cruise.

We did some other stuff too but those were the main events. Training was pretty solid as well and I enjoyed getting to run with the team. I hung in there pretty well for a triathlete! 5 other guys had their bikes with them so we did quite a few rides as well including a brutal 4hr, 70+ ride that left me pretty wiped for days. This was the 2nd longest ride of my life and did I mention that Maine has HILLS?! Nice, big rolling hills. Great for training and suffering.

Another memorable ride was on Sunday where me and another guy did a mountain climb in the fog. Visibility was about 20ft the whole 30min up and we were talking about how careful we were going to have to be on the way down. What do you know but as soon as we turn around at the top it starts to rain!! So we got to descend a mountain in pouring, freezing, stinging rain, and fog. We cut that ride short at about 2 hrs.

Swimming was good though not as consistent as I would have liked. Oh well. The temperatures were beautiful. Generally mid 60's was the high and early mornings were much cooler. The large, black moose fly's were probably the most annoying part of the trip.

This Saturday at 4pm E.T. I'll be racing my last race as a junior at the National Championships in Colorado Springs. I feel like I'm in great shape but I haven't raced or even done workouts to confirm that in about a month. I'm trying to go with the mindset just to have fun and race as hard and as smart as I can. I'm going to try to enjoy the experience as much as possible then get back to the miserable Texas heat were I can focus on Cross Country for the fall. Sub 27min 8k is the goal!!

Happenings

I'm finally home from my awesome 2 week trip to San Antonio. Both camps went great. The select camp was a lot of fun getting to meet athletes from other countries including Barbados, Antigua, Mexico, Guatamala, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. We did a lot of testing and I wasn't too pleased with my results but oh well. The second week was also fun as it was a camp for kids 11-18 from all over the SouthMidWest region. I was rooming with a little 11 year old boy who was basicaly the coolest kid ever. He rode the smallest road bike I've ever seen, 40cm!

My IconOne teammates Travis, and Kate Ross(Also on the junior national team) were staying the 2nd week to help as well and so we did a lot of our own workouts together. Well, at least Kate and I did and Travis jumped in when he felt like it. It's definitely a lot more fun doing tough workouts with other people next to you, pushing you and I learned a lot about sometimes just sucking it up and getting the training done even when your completely exhausted. After the second camp I stayed at Jeff and Shelly's house for the weekend to do some more training and spent all my free time in front of their TV watching the tour and doing all sorts of wacky things to my legs to help them recover.

I'm sure I still have some lingering fatigue from the last 2 weeks of training along with the fact that I've done some sort of race (bike or tri) every weekend for about the last 2 months but things haven't slowed down much. This week I'm trying to get some decent running mileage in before I leave for Maine for a 2 week trip with the UT Tyler cross country team. There I will for sure get in running shape but I'm looking forward to bringing my bike and swim stuff as well and getting to train with some of the triathletes at the school.

My next race will be USAT Junior Nationals in Colorado Springs, CO on August 9th. It will actually be my first draft legal race of the year and my last draft legal as a junior. I think I'm in good enough shape to do well there as long as I can keep improving my swim and not come out of the water too far down from the leaders. Then it's full on into my first ever cross country season were hopefully I can come out of the fall with a wicked run to throw down.

I'm Off!

Yup I'm just finishing the last stages of packing before I leave for San Antonio in less than an hour. I will be there for about 2 weeks attending the Pan Am Junior Select camp next week and then staying the following week to help out at a USAT Skills camp. Both of these camps are run by my coach and I'm looking forward to getting absolutely destroyed next week as I attempt to hang with some of the top
juniors on our continent.

After worlds I was planning on going to the Des Moines, Iowa junior elite race but about two weeks out they announced that the race had been changed to a duathlon because of flooding. Travis and I decided that it wasn't worth it to drive up their now because they had also taken away most of the points that it was going to be worth. Well about 4 days before the race they announced again that now the swim was back! Grrr... Travis and I had already made plans to do some crit racing in Austin that weekend so we were forced to miss out. Congrats to Kate Ross though who took the junior female title.

The crits in Austin were a blast even though I didn't do great. The weekend before on June 14h and 15th I'd done some crits in Dallas and placed 2nd and 1st but in Austin I was racing 4/5's instead of just 5's and the fields were much larger at 75-80 cyclist. I'm still not comfortable enough in large packs yet but it was a lot of fun and I gained some good experience. There was a pro crit Saturday night that was AWESOME to watch as they had a bunch of top teams like Rock Racing, Toyota United, Jelly Belly, Colavita, and even a guy from Slipstream(now Garmin) Chipotle.

Happy training.

Pleased, But Not Satisfied

Well I am currently sitting at home preparing for the first workout of the day. As I reflect back over this years World Championships I am pleased with my performance. I had a solid race and did much better than last year. Pleased, but not satisfied. No, I don't think I'm ever satisfied with my results. I always see a way I could have gone faster and look at how I can improve in the next race. The Hy-Vee Junior ITU race is in less than two weeks, and I want to go faster.

The morning of the World Championships Travis and I woke up bright and early at 5:30. Actually it felt more like 7:30 for us as we hadn't fully adjusted to the time change yet, in this case though I think it was a good thing. We walked down to a local coffee shop to grab some coffee and a scone then met up with Shelly and another kid from California that was hanging out with us, Rudy. We had dropped our bikes off the night before so we walked to transition to set our stuff up, then walked back the half mile to the race start. It was cold and rainy. Perfectly miserable weather for racing.

In the Athletes lounge we put on our wetsuits, lubed up with vaseline and attached our "squid lids" to the top of our noggins.

These were specially designed neoprene caps we'd bought the day before to keep some heat in. We payed $50 for them and after our race we sold them for $60. The expo vendors didn't order enough and people were desperate to get their hands on them. We lined up on the beach, all 52 16-19 and 20-24 year olds and when the horn went off ran and dove into the 52 degree water.

I had a decent enough swim. It was hard to really push hard because you couldn't feel much and the swim ended up being over 1000m instead of the 750m it was supposed to be. I did find a guy to draft off of and used him until the last 100m or so when I sprinted around him to beat him out of the water. Not exactly the most gentlemanly thing to do but hey, that's racing. I was 19th out of the water in my age group of 27 competitors and 13th out of T1. The cold coupled with my quick transitioning skills helped me pass a bunch of people that beat me out of the water. Transition itself was an absolute slip-N-slide. My coach was videoing and she has footage of people falling all over the place, with their bikes, without their bikes, arms still in their wetsuit flopping around like a beached seal, you name it. Because every ones feet were numb and the grass was wet and muddy it made it very difficult for sure.

I made it out of transition without incident and was soon on the bike cranking away. Same as I described earlier the bike course is not and easy one. I felt good on the uphills and the downhill were just flat out scary. It was still raining lightly so everything was slick and the road itself was poor quality with lots of bumps and holes that are very difficult to see when your screaming downhill at 35+mph with cold rain blowing into your eyes. I was 1:15 back of Travis when I got on my bike and after two laps I heard my coach yell that he was only 10 seconds up the road. I caught him a couple minutes later and blew by him at close to warp speed. A minute later here he comes chugging past me up the hill and we switched back and forth like this all the way to the top. Then as we turned for the descent into T2 I passed him again, this time for good. I wanted to put some time into him so I took as many risks as I dared going around the wet turns, maintaining a death grip on my bull horns, no aero bars for this descent. I'd already found the really bad holes on the first 2 laps so I had a good idea of what line to take and put 15 seconds on Travis entering T2.

Right as I came off the bike I saw another USA guy ahead of me, Jack St. Marie who I had out sprinted for 2nd place at our qualifier in Tuscaloosa. This concerned me because at that race he ran 16:28 off the bike and I was at least a minute slower then that. I passed him as we ran towards our racks, threw my bike on and carefully and methodically pulled my shoes on. My hands and feet were numb so I had to go by site rather then feel. Travis ran by as I unclipped my helmet and I grabbed my race belt and took off. As I headed out I saw Jack taking his bike off one rack desperately looking around for his own rack. "This is good," I thought. (Later I discovered that Jack had also sliced his foot open on the swim, he had been bleeding the whole race and would require stitches afterwards.)

As I started the run I felt surprisingly good and I quickly passed a British guy in my age group. The whole rest of the run I just ran strong. At a couple of the turn arounds I could see Travis and Jack but they didn't look like they were gaining much. There was another guy from the U.S. about 20-30 seconds ahead of me but I couldn't catch him no matter how hard I tried. I had worn an underarmour shirt underneath my race suit as well as armwarmers underneath the wetsuit and those definitely helped keep my core temperature warm. I ran hard the whole way and crossed the line 8th overall and 3rd American. My 5.1k time was 17:53 with an adjusted time of 17:32 for a 5k. A new PR for me. Off the bike, in 55 degree rainy weather, on a course that wasn't flat, at the World Championships. Travis came in 30 seconds later after getting passed by a Canadian in the last few hundred meters.

RESULTS! - Just click on "sprint distance" and "16-19 M."

Im very happy with my performance. I finally figured out cold weather racing in the 3rd cold race I've had this year, and in the biggest. 19th out of the water, 13 on the bike, 10th off the bike, 9th out of T2, 8th at the line. Once again it was a blast representing my country and racing against International competition. I'm stoked about how well I did. Stoked, but not satisfied.

I'm in Vancouver!

Travis, Shelly and I flew into Vancouver yesterday with no incident and were soon at our hotel which is right on the race site. We can literally look at our window and see the finish as well as most of the swim course. After putting our bikes together we did a pre-ride of the bike course which is a 7km loop we do 3 times. Theres a nice little 0.6mi climb we do on each loop followed by a 1-2 mi fast and somewhat scary downhill section.

The biggest news hear is the weather. Its in the mid 50's today and raining, raining, raining. We watched the junior elite races today and it was a blast to watch the super fast action without the crowds we experienced in Germany.

The water is an absolutely frigid 55 degrees. I thought Germany was cold last year at 61 or so but this takes cold to a whole new level. We did a swim today for about 5-10 minutes and though it is cold and your feet, hands, and face go numb in about 30 seconds- it is doable. My biggest problem was waiting for my face to numb because it hurts and stings intensely when you first put it in. 2XU brought in 40 neoprene caps to wear and thanks to Travis we got on the wait list about 20th or so before they came in. I just got back from picking it up and I think it will help keep me warm as well as some other tricks we plan on employing such as pouring warm water down the wetsuit and holding our pee until just before we go. Hey, anything to keep from going hypothermic.

Our race start is at 7:40 tomorrow pacific time and you should be able to track us live at triathlon.org. Send warm thoughts my way!!

Further Update

Ok here is an additional update to my weekend down in Austin for the Captex triathlon.

After the race it was nice to just relax with some friends up from San Antonio and not think about triathlons for a little while. We went to my grandparents lakehouse, then to eat, then back to the main house to watch a movie. If you wanted to know what the movie Sweeney Todd is about I could only give you a very brief summary as I slept through most of it. Monday morning (Memorial day) was another relaxing day. I seem to have trouble sleeping in these days and was up at 7:30, a couple hours before anyone else. I ate breakfast then did a 30min run where I discovered a neat trail 1/4 mile from the house. Someday I'm gonna go back and do all 14 miles of the out and back.

Later I drove down to San Antonio where I was staying with my friend and her Sister and brother-in-law. We played some volleyball and swam before I left to go pick up my NEW ROAD BIKE!!!

Yes indeed. The bike was getting built by my coach's husband who is an awesome mechanic and bike fitter. The Giant frame was given to me and I got a build kit for it with Sram Rival components. Its awesome and weighs in at just under 17.5 lbs.

Tuesday I was up early to make it back to Dallas for noon swim practice then I raced the Tuesday night crit on my new bike where I got 2nd. A fellow triathlete named Mark who also raced Captex chased me down on the last lap after I broke away with 3 to go. If I hadn't been trashed from the weekend I know I could have stayed off the front but oh well. They said it was one of the fastest cat 5 races they've done but it felt super slow to me.

A couple more hard days of training and I started my taper for worlds on Saturday. I leave Wednesday morning at 6:40am and race Friday at 7:30am. Its getting close....

Capitol of Texas Race Report

My friend Jess and I left around 8:30 Friday morning to head down to Austin for the Capitol of Texas Triathlon. We arrived a little before 1, found a place with free parking and unhooked our bikes from the back of our little Toyota Echo. The lines at the expo were enormous! Typically I don't arrive until later in the evening and I'll be one of the last ones to check in. Today though we showed up right about the time all the 2500 other competitors did and the result was a 20-30min wait in line. It wasn't too bad as we ended up in line with my coach Shelly, and another family on our team that were all competing the next day.

After collecting our packets, and checking our bikes in Jess and I headed to my grandparents house about 20min from the race site for some R&R. My grandparents were actually up at MY house over the weekend so we had the whole place to ourselves. Dinner with the team that night, and an early bedtime meant I was pumped to race the next day.

I love Captex because the sprint doesn't start until 9 am which allows for some serious sleeping in. At the race site it was already getting hot and humid and I decided not to wear my wetsuit even though the water was wetsuit legal at 75 degrees. My other reason other then to avoid overheating was that my teammate Travis, and youth elite Hunter, were both not wearing a wetsuit. Their both faster swimmers than I am and I wanted to be able to compare myself with no other variables.

I felt strong on the swim but wasn't happy with my time back from Hunter and Travis. I once again got to watch the lead pack slip off just out of my reach as I tried in vain to latch onto the back. Out on the bike it was super crowded and I believe this actually played to my advantage as I have pretty good bike handling skills. I felt awesome on the bike and was absolutely hammering, weaving in and out of people, diving inside on the corners, riding the middle line as cyclists coming the other way whizzed at me. I tried my best to always pass on the left but it wasn't always possible. Coming off the bike I was suprised to see that Travis' bike wasn't racked yet and this gave me hope as well as some cause for worry as I wasn't sure whether he had crashed or what had happened.

Out on the run I felt horrible but just found a pace I could hold and tried to hang on. At a turn-around 3/4's of a mile in I could see that I had a solid lead, at least in my wave and that Travis was back in 3rd a good 2-3 minutes down. Towards the end of the LONG run my legs started to really feel good but I was so hot and overheating I still felt like crap. I kept looking at my watch and saw my run time creep up over 19 minutes at which point I knew for sure that the course was not quite accurate.

For awhile it looked like I might have won the race but in the end a 30-34 guy any another wave got me by a good bit. I took 2nd out of almost 800 competitors and was pleased with my overall effort. Travis had 2 major mishaps on the bike including coming into T2 after only 1 lap then after going out to do a 2nd lap his seatpost slid down and he was left to peddle the remaining 5-6 miles out of the saddle. In doing so he injured his knee somewhat but it looks like he'll be alright.

This report been a little long so I'll post again later with some of what we did the rest of the weekend and how my firs crit went on my new road bike. (Which is SWEET by the way!!)

Full results and splits are here- www.run-far.com

Back on Track

So time for a little update maybe.

As the title suggests I am indeed back on track as far as training is concerned. Starting last week and all this week I've been putting in some pretty solid hours. can tell I still have the fitness there from all the work I did earlier in the spring and now I just need to take the next step.

Fundraising for my trip to the World Championships is going well. A lot of different people have donated and I want to give a huge thanks to everyone thats helped me out. I had a garage sale last weekend that made some pretty good money as well. I still have a little more to raise and then I also have to pay for my trips to Des Moines, Iowa, and nationals in Colorado Springs but I'm confident that I'm going to be able to make it work.

Racing this weekend in the Capitol of Texas Triathlon. I'm basically training through it so I'm not going to be expecting any sort of spectacular results but it's a fun race and I'll go out there and give it my all.

I will also be getting a new road bike built this weekend which I'm totally psyched about!! I was given a Giant Composite 1 road .frame and purchased the build kit for it through my team. The stuff arrived wednesday so when I'm in Austin this weekend I will make an extra trip to San Antonio to get the bike built up with full SRAM Rival components. Those of you who know that Rival is SRAM's 3rd tier component group I'll have you know that it is still 3 grams lighter then Dura-Ace. I have an excel spreadsheet showing all those calculations, so there!

Update

I'm finally done with school,thank God!! And I really mean that with all my heart.

I one B and five A's so I am fairly satisfied with that. I hate B's though but oh well.

I'm not too confident about my training right now as none of the workouts have been going well. I feel horrible and my arms hurt when I'm in the pool and when running or biking anytime I am supposed to up the intensity I'll feel good for about 20-30 seconds then this wave of like exhaustion will come over me and I'll have to fight to stay on pace. I think it may have to do with my allergies still being bad which in turn gives me asthma problems. I probably wouldn't notice it if I wasn't trying to train at a high level and be competitive as a triathlete but if my body isn't getting enough oxygen I feel every bit of it. All I can do is stay on my allergy medicine and hope this season passes quickly. I'm trying to keep my confidence up there but it is tough.

I am excited to announce that I'm officially enrolled as a student at the University of Texas at Tyler.


I went out Friday with my mom and we got registration, transfer scholarship, and housing all taken care of. I'll be living in a 4-bedroom on-campus apartment. I get a bedroom to myself and share a bathroom with one other guy. I'm excited and it should be a lot of fun. Especially getting to run cross country with the team there. They have some super fast guys that will really help push me and the coach is a 7 time Ironman Hawaii finisher with quite a few overall wins at the sprint and olympic distance level so he is totally cool with triathlon training.

Actually one of the guys who goes there already beat me at Athens this year so they have some pretty good triathletes on the team.

Worlds is 4 weeks away and its time to get down to business.

A Weekend to Remember

Had a great trip to Austin this last weekend to go Scuba diving. I've been taking the class since mid February and wasn't enjoying it much at all. The pool work, though necessary, was boring and the gear was uncomfortable. I'm not accustomed to swimming with 30 some odd pounds on my back and it wasn't a lot of fun. The dive trip however was awesome.

We did our dive in Lake Travis and I was signed up for the Saturday/Sunday dive with our first dive being at 1 pm on Saturday. Friday night Michael, and Ian (two good buddies) picked me up from work and we drove down to my grandparents ranch outside Dripping Springs a little west of Austin. The next morning it was a 45 minute drive to the dive site at Windy Point where where we arrived about 10 am. This was so we could do some good riding before hand in the Texas hill country. I swear we found some of the biggest hills in Texas.

The first two dives went well and it was a lot of fun doing it in a real environment with rocks and fish and murky water.

The next day we did some more skill work and then a deep dive to 60ft which was cool. I actually got to go to 60ft twice because my group was the last one and the instructor needed a buddy to go down and untie the rope the buoy was attached to. Its pretty cool how you can be down 60ft underwater, hooked up to all this gear but still perform tasks and maneuver around.

I tried to bike again after that and made it up one big hill with a super nasty grade but I was wiped and had to turn around.


In other news it looks like I'll be working with a group based in the Rockwall area to help prepare for Worlds. It's a team called Tri-ProSoap and though their real small they look like a bunch of guys. The guy who started the team actually has has my bio and stuff up on the website already and even created a neat little paypal link you can click on to donate funds. The amount is set at $60, or basically the registration cost for a sprint tri. Check out the site here

Tri-ProSoap

I'm still desperately trying to raise funds to go to Worlds on June 6th so I appreciate any and every little bit

Life Goes On

I turned 19 today. And did a triathlon to celebrate. I won. So it was a pretty good birthday present. Happy Birthday me.

Now I'm going to bed. I've got swim practice in the morning.

Tuscaloosa Tri-Palooza Part 2

Watching the Olympic trials on Saturday was definitely way awesome. However spending 5+ hours out in the sun the day before MY race wasn't the best idea. Saturday night I hardly slept, had a headache and was hacking and coughing all night. The alarm went off at 5:30, and after eating some oatmeal and part of a Luna bar I met up with everyone in the hotel parking lot and we biked over to transition.

During my run warm up I still didn't feel great. Travis and I ran 1 loop of the run as it was a 2 loop course. While doing some stretching and setting up my transition I had a sort placid almost lethargic feeling. I still had a slight head ache and was really starting to get concerned about how I would be able to perform. There were a lot of fit looking juniors riding some pretty nice bikes and those pre-race doubts began to creep in. However I knew that I was in good shape and I kept telling myself that the training and fitness was there regardless of how I felt at the moment.

With 20 minutes to race start I put on my wetsuit and jumped into the water. A little chilly at first but nice once you got going. Swim warm up went well and I kept telling myself that all I needed to do was race hard for 1 hr and clinch my worlds spot.

For the start that had about 100 of us backed up against this little small pontoon, treading water, feet in faces, rubbing shoulders. The first turn bouy was about 100m out and slighly to the right of the start so I positioned myself in the middle while all the big guns jostled for position on the right. I was in the middle at the front hoping that I wouldn't get mauled 50m into the swim. At the word "GO!" I took off at about 98% hoping to stay clear of the pack of animals coming after me. Just like I hoped the fast guys went by on the right and I then slid over to get behind them. I was swimming hard but I couldn't quite latch onto the back of the pack and spent the whole swimming by myself or drafting off of the odd swimmer before they wandered off course. Coming out of the water I hoped my swim was good as I had been able to swim a hard pace the whole time.

T1 was fast (As usual) and out on the bike I started passing some of the juniors. At the turnaround I knew I was in 6th spot but couldn't tell how many of the in front were from my age group or not. Me and another guy had been passing each other back and forth for the first stage of the bike but he eventually went and stayed in front then gradually pulled away on the last few miles. I just didn't quite have that extra "MMPPPH!" to step it up.

I had the fastest T2 of the day and headed out on the run feeling like crap. Thats normal though so I was confident my legs would come around. They didn't really, I just felt sort of "off" the whole race. About 300m from the finish another junior caught me and I tucked in behind him. Coming around the last turn we were both sprinting all out and I was able to beat him by 2 seconds. H--- YEAH!!




Travis won the junior race, I was second, and Alex got 3rd in the junior female race- we're all going to Vancouver!!!




Now I just have to figure out how to pay for this trip...

Tuscaloosa Tri-Palooza Part 1

What a weekend. Collegiate Nationals, Olympic Trials, World Qualifier, I was there and got to see it all. (And participate some as well.)

We arrived in Tuscaloosa Friday night about 15 minutes before packet pickup closed. After picking up our packets, eating our first dinner and checking into the hotel room we headed out to Olive Garden for a real dinner. The "we" I am referring too here is Travis Decker- IconOne teammate, friend, and bed-buddy from Germany, Shelly Campbell- my coach, IconOne founder and coach, Alexandra Weber- IconOne teammate who lives in my metroplex, Alex's parents, A kid from California, his mom and coach who also is the RADC for their region (as is Shelly), and of course me.

The next morning all of us slept in except Travis who got up around 6 am to go on a ridiculous T-shirt finding mission at the race site. I rolled out of bed a little after 8 and headed out for an easy 20' jog with a few pickups. 9:30 am Rudy (California kid), Alex, Travis and I rolled out to go ride the race course. Shelly was driving the SAG vehicle but we all stuck together pretty well. The bike course was a single loop with a few fairly decent climbs.

Back at the hotel we showered, grabbed some lunch, and headed back to the race site for the Olympic Trials. WOW! What a pair of exciting races they were. We got there about halfway through the womens bike and got to watch Julie Ertel run away from Sarah Haskins and Sarah Groff to claim the 2nd Olympic spot.
The Mens race was even better. Andy Potts led out of the water by a whopping 48 seconds but the trio of Hunter Kemper, Brian Fleischman and Matt Reed caught him halfway through the bike. On the last lap (there were 8) Reed broke away on a hill and came out of T2 with :25 lead on the others. We didn't think he would hold it as he traditionally hasn't been as fast a runner as Potts, and Kemper but after 2 laps (of 4) he had actually lengthened his lead. Coming down the finishing he had enough time to celebrate and slap hands with the crowd. Me and Travis were both standing right along the chute and got to feel the sweaty touch of victory graze our palms.



For full olympic trials results go to http://www.onlineraceresults.com/event/view_event.php?event_id=2469 and click on either elite men or elite women.

My own race report will follow in another post sometime in the near future.

The Time is Approaching

The big race I've been shooting for all spring is fast approaching. I think/hope I'm ready. Top ten spots qualify for non-draft legal sprint worlds and currently there are 26 other 16-19 year olds I will be racing against.

I spent some time today working on my bike. It was filthy so I washed it real good, made sure I could take my pedals off, polished it, and spent some time cleaning up the front end aero wise. It looks good, nothing like a clean bike to make you feel fast. Hopefully it will pay off on Sunday...

New Kicks

I love birthdays, and I love these shoes. Thank you grandparents.

New PR

Remember how last week I set a personal record for most meters wam in a day? Well yesterday I did it again- 8000 meters in one day!! That would be 5 miles for those of you who prefer English base units. (Actually if you want to get really technical its 4.97 miles) Anyhow it took about 3 seperate workouts to get there but it was good.

As well as swimming 8km I did an afternoon brick workout of 1:10 bike w/3x15' at Z4-Z5. Legs were lacking the power and I couldn't get my hr up for the life of me so wasn't too happy with that. Off the bike I ran a 10k for time doing 2' at 5k pace/1' jog/1' 5k pace/:30 jog/:30 5k pace/:30 jog. It was freakin tough but I ran 39:20 so I was pretty stoked about that. Thats 6:20 pace which is about what I was running for a 5k off the bike in a race a year ago. I'm gettin there...

I Got Beat By This Guy

This would be a shot of Michael Lovato as he crosses the line in 9th place at the 2007 Hawaii Ironman World Championsips. Not too bad eh? Well I am proud to say that I had the privileg of being beat by this amazing athlete this last weekend in the lonestar sprint triathlon in Galveston, Tx.

He outsplit me in all 3 disciplines. (Except transitions of course) and ran a 16 and change 5k off the bike. However at the finish line yours truly was only 2:50 (that would be minutes and seconds) back of this pro triathlete.

Yup I had a great race in Galveston. 4th overall. 1st in my age group. Beat two fellow juniors who have handily beat me every time I've raced them for the last 2 years. One of them was my teammate I traveled to Germany with, Travis.

Awesome 500m ocean swim that I came out of in 7:27 about :40 down on Sam and Travis. Fast transition and onto the bike I started to hammer. This course was fast and we had a slight tailwind on the way out. I don't think I saw anything under 27mph the whole way to the turn around. Shortly before the turn around I passed both Travis and Sam who were riding somewhat close together. (I don't mean to say they were drafting because they weren't) I kept the pain factor high for the rest of the 12.5 mile course. There was a headwind on the way back so I wasn't going quite as fast but still averaged 24.3 for the bike.

Off the bike and out of T2 I was running scared. I had about 20ish seconds on Sam and Travis but I knew Travis could run under 18 and I hadn't done that yet. Sam is usually not as fast a runner but I didn't know what his training had been like through the offseason. Well I didn't see them before the turnaround where I was suprised to see they were both now 30-40 seconds back of me and Travis was looking awful. I knew then that if I kept a solid pace and didn't blow up that I had them. Sure enough I crossed the line with the satisfaction of knowing I'd run a solid race and stepped it up when I needed. 5k run split- 17:46. A 25 second pr for me.

For winning my age group I got some pretty nice gear. This fuelt belt-



And this decent timex watch. At least its close to the one I got.



Does this mean I'm pro?

OW! OW!

To carry on with the swimming theme of my last post I decided to grace my page once again with one of the fastest swimmers in the world. This is Ian Crocker, UT swimmer who has a magnificent rivalry in the 100m butterfly with the gentleman mentioned below. This picture is not for pure asthetic appeal as it does bear relevance to my topic. Because last night, for the first time in my life, I swam a 100 meters of butterfly. It was painful. Enough said.

I Want To Be Like This Guy

Okay so maybe not quite. I have no aspirations of ever becoming anything like the swimmer that Michael Phelps is. However I do have the modest goal of improving my swim to the point where I can compete in a draft-legal triathlon. That is why yesterday I swam the most meterage I ever have in my life.


6200 meters. Not super impressive by Michael Phelps, high school, or professional triathlete standards, but for a young up and coming, used-to-not-be-a-very-good swimmer- its not to bad.

My first workout yesterday was at 6 am when I swam with the masters group. Then I came back in the afternoon to do another workout. I don't recall exactly what we did in the morning but Tuesday is stroke day so we did some stuff other then freestyle. afternoon workout was a-

200m warm up
5x100 pull with buoy and band. (Band is a sadistic training tool used to tie my legs together so I am not allowed to stabilize with any semblance of a kick)
5x200 on 3:00 (Actually had to take it up to 3:10)
400 swim with every 4th 25 fast
1k straight. This I did in around 15:55 or something. I was completely done after this.

Today I got up and swam again with masters and guess what? We had a main set of 5x200's!! Luckily we got a 3:20 interval for this one so I got some decent rest. My arms are still tired and I foresee a few weeks of this before my body can adapt to the higher volume of swimming.

So far I'm at 11,425m for the week (Don't ask about the 25) with another 2k swim planned this eveing. My goal is to get close to 20k before the race in galveston this Saturday.

Happy Training! :-)

Money In the Bank

It's been a good week so far. I have gotten all my training in with some good high intensity workouts. Especially on the bike, that is what I really need. Haven't swam as much as I should- only 11,050 meters so far. I talked to Shelly today and she wants me at between 20-25k A WEEK! Ugh, thats a lot. The way I look at is if I can swim 6 days a week at the 1hr DAM practice and get in 3k each time then all I have to do is swim an extra 2-5k on my own. We'll see how that goes.

Good brick workout today at a track. I hauled my bike and trainer down to the cinder surface and cranked away. 10min warm up ride, 10 min jog and I was ready to go. The workout consisted of-

10' bike in zone 3 standing every 2' for :30 sec.
1k run between 3:25-3:30
8' bike same as above
1k run same
6' bike
1k run

This was continous with only about :15 sec for transition in between. It was super windy and I was about 5-10 seconds off my run time goals but oh well. Good tough workout. Just more money in the bank baby. Only about 4 weeks left to Alabam and the world qualifier.

Training Weekend

Wow it is so NOT good to be back at school and work!

The training camp in San Antonio was awesome. A big thanks to Texas Military Institute for letting us use their facilities. I drove down Friday morning and our first session was Friday afternoon where we got a bike fit and then a bike power threshold test done. This was the first of three tests we were doing this weekend. For the threshold test we started at 150 watts and increased by 10 watts every two minutes. I was feeling kinda tired and sluggish and wasn't too pleased with my numbers but apparently they still put me up real high compared to other juniors.

Saturday morning we started about 7:30 with another test. This one we warmed up, then did 30 minutes on the trainer at 240 watts, off the bike was a 3k run on a cinder track for time. My 3k wasn't too great but it still is big improvement since last summer. I went out way too fast (5:20 pace) because my teamate Travis was a little slower out of transition and I was trying to stay in front of him. It didn't work and he still caught me. I knew it was going to suck when I hit 1k wondering how the heck I was going to finish this thing. I got a little under 11 minutes but know I can still get much faster. It hurt, bad.

After that we spent about 4 hrs on the bike working on handling, pacelining, cornering, pack riding, etc. A lot of the kids were decent bikers but hadn't done much pack riding. I got some pretty sick biker tan lines started. It was hot too, about 95 degrees or so and we had to make sure and keep drinking water with Elete electrolyte formula mixed in.

After the ride and a stop at subway for lunch none of us were looking forward to the swim test to come but... we didn't have a choice. The pool was FREEZING first of all. Like low 70's. Once you got going and did some hard sets though it was fine. Our test was a 200 for time, 1' rest then an 800 for time. I was feeling super sluggish and my arms were real heavy but I gutted it out. I'm still really slow in the swim but I've been working on it a bunch and my time of 12:33 was still an improvement. It was so good to finish that 800 and be done with all the tests. just mentally it is really hard to summon up the resolve for three maximal efforts within a 24 hr period. Especiall since I knew exactly the pain and suffering that each test would entail.

After the swim was a transition workout which I OWNED AT!!! Transition is my specialty and I won all but one of the "worlds shortest triathlons."

Then a shower and we all met at olive garden for a team dinner.

Sunday was some running drills, core work, plyometric and isometric type stuff. Here I could really see how much I've improved since last summer. Especially compared to some of the other guys who hadn't done any of this stuff before. Then was another bike ride to a parking lot for more paceline and cornering practice. After a short swim working on drafting and thrashing (i.e. pack swimming) we were pretty much done. Shelly had videod almost everything we'd done that weekend so she went through with everyone pointing out certain things for an hours or so. Then everyone gathered up their stuff and headed for their respective homes.

All in all it was an awesome weekend to meet my teamates and get in some good training. There are eight of us total on the team. four are juniors (Me, Travis, Alexandra, and Kate- who is on the national team as well. She wasn't at the camp.) Three male youth elites and one femal elite. I'm the old man of the group but not the fastest by far. the 4th fastest swimmer, 2nd or 3rd fastest runner, and 1st or 2nd fastest biker.

It's a good group and I'm looking forward to an awesome season!

Weight Management

So spring break hasn't been the most relaxing week of my life but what can I say- I guess its the life of a triathlete. It's been an interesting week overall with some decent but not stellar training going on. I think when I ramped up the volume and intensity I didn't balance it out with taking in the proper amont of calories. I've been trying to take off about 5 lbs or so for this race season but I dropped about 4 of them between Friday and Tuesday. Not good. That resulted in me feeling really sluggish Tuesday night and even Wednesday as well. In fact today wasn't super either though it was a somewhat easier day. Part of it may be due to dehydration and part to not enough calories. I guess I picked the wrong time to start really restricting my diet. Last night I went home and stuffed my face and this morning I was up 2 more lbs. Such drastic swings in weight can't be good and I'm hoping I can stabilize this and then take a few more pounds off before April 20th.

Tomorrow I head down to San Antonio for a weekend of training and testing with my team "IconOne". It should be really tough and a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to hanging out with my teammate Travis I went to World with and getting to meet the others on the team as well. Hopefully I'll come back exhausted and in awesome shape!!

Cold Weather Racing

Well the first triathlon of the season is out of the way and its a good feeling. The race itself had nothing "feel good" about it but it was definitely good to race again. Here's a lil race report for ya:

The weather forecast was true to its word and the temps were below freezing when I loaded up my bike at 6:00 am Saturday morning. I'd driven out to Athens, Tx the night before and spent the night with my family in the Holiday Inn Express there. Race morning I was catching a ride with one of my friends clients, she had an extra space on her bike rack so I thought I might as well carpool.

Got to transition. Set up. Body marked. All that good jazz then headed out for a nice run. Ran out to the 1 mile mark and back then did some strides and stretching. The legs felt alright. There was a little bit of tightness right beneath my glute but nothing too bad. By the time I was done with warm up it was almost 7:30 when the pre race meeting was supposed to start. Jack Weiss was directing this race and he is an excellent race director. His races are well organized and safety is a big priority with him. This means that he doesn't allow exceptions and when he said everyone needed to be at the pre race meeting, he means EVERYONE. This resulted in me not getting a chance to warm up for the swim. Oh well, it was only 300m so I'd survive.

I was #15 but a couple people didn't show up so I believe I was 11th in line. This was a pool swim for which I was eternally grateful and so they started people every 10 seconds. I jumped in and within 100m, caught, and passed the guy in front of me. Running out of the warm pool area into the cold was a shock and I quickly pulled on a long sleeve shirt over my wet skin. Helmet and bib number on I was off after having passed about 5 people or so in the transition area.

The bike was freezing and my face went numb within the first couple miles. The temperatures were mid to low 30's but luckily the wind wasn't too severe. Still between the miles of chip seal, bone rattling asphalt, slight rolling hills, and cold temperatures it wasn't exactly enjoyable.

I passed more people on the bike until I was riding in second with a few miles left. It was at this point that #24 blew by me and my dreams of winning the race took a dive. I knew that this guy who had just gone by me was a superb cross country runner and had hoped that I would be able to out bike him. No such luck and I entered transition about :30 down to him and 1:30 off the lead.

I had trouble putting my shoes on because I couldn't feel my feet or fingers at all and once I started the situation didn't improve much. Essentially I couldn't feel anything from my waist down and had no perception of how fast or hard I was going. At the turn around I saw that I had actually made up some ground on the first guy off the bike. He had started 9th so I knew I only had to get within :40 or so of him to beat him.

My face had become so numb on the bike that my eyes were half shut and I couldn't open them all the way. I could see well enough to not fall over but couldn't make out facial features or bib numbers at all. This meant that I didn't notice how apparently horrible the guy directly in front of me was doing until I crossed the line and saw him laying face first on the ground. I had gained a little more on him, enough to beat him when chip timing was factored in but not enough to quite pass him. He had a mild case of hypothermia and they whisked him off to an ambulance to warm him up. My extremities were still cold but my core was warm from the heat I had been generating.

All in all it was a good start to the season. I ended up 3rd overall for which I was pleased. My splits were extremely slow, especially on the bike but it is hard to gauge in such cold weather. Next up is the Galveston Triathlon on March 29th. I'm looking forward to summer and racing in the Texas heat!!

Race Time!

This entire week I have been looking forward to the Athens triathlon this Saturday. The first race of the season!! However the weather has done its best lately to curb my enthusiasm. Currently it is 33 degrees outside but luckily it has stopped raining/sleeting/snowing. Still, the idea of busting out of a warm, humid pool envirement- onto my bike going 24 mph with windchill in the 20's does not exactly appeal to me. Nonetheless I can't wait. The offseason has been too long. Come rain, sleet, snow or hail I will race!!

I anticipate slower then normal transition times and possibly a few cases of hypothermia. Nothing too drastic though and it should be a good race. Can't wait!!!

Much Better

I'm back!!

Yup and feeling better then ever. Today was my first day back into real training and it felt so good to be working hard again. Looking forward to Athens this weekend. First tri of the season and time to test the legs a little.

An Ailing Athlete

Apologies for the time gap in posting. I've been sick this week, and it sucks. Not anything really debilitating. I've managed to make all my classes and go to work still but have had no energy left for training. Actually I don't know if I would classify it strictly as "sick" more like "Infected." Basicaly I have this boil on my lower backish, almost the we-don't-talk-about-this-area regions. Its nasty, oozing, extremely painful mess that I've had since last Saturday night. Not sure how the heck it got there but it hurts! Anyways as my body has been fighting that it's resulted in me feeling horrible, running a slight fever, some congestion, etc. I did finally go to the doctor today and now I'm on some hardcore antibiotics to try and kick this thing.

Sunday-Wednesday I didn't train at all. Yesterday I swam like 700m but my arms were just too tight and tired. Today I made it 1500m but it still was not fun. Running is almost impossible as I still have some trouble walking and for biking we'll have to see tomorrow. I'm really needing to get back to training with Athens next week and my world qualifier in I think 6 or 7 weeks. Its getting to be crunch time and I NEED to be training.

Swimming, swimming, swimming, swi...

I'm in somewhat of a self imposed swim block right now. Self imposed means that my coach hasn't told me specifically how often to swim but we've agreed it would be good to try and bump up the meterage and see how it goes. My goal for this week is to get in 20k.

Monday was the official start of my week and so I dutifully got up and trekked to the pool for 6 am practice. That afternoon I came back before work and did 1.5k, including a 200m time trial in which I knocked 6 seconds off by best time ever! I was super excited to finally see some significant improvement. I feel that now I've reached another level with my swimming just as I had the breakthrough run on Saturday.

Tuesday was relatively easy with just 2.5k that evening.

This morning was tough as my arms were tired from last night. I had to check to see that they were still attached when I flopped out of the pool after practice. I did the 3k but the pulling was tough (as always) and it doesn't help that February is "Butterfly month." Its alright though. I like fly and I think its good for triathletes to be well-rounded in all the strokes.

So far I'm at exactly 10,050 meters for the week. I plan on getting another 2k in this evening, then about 3k tomorrow morning. I'll then have to see whether I want to do a second workout tomorrow afternoon or wait until Saturday. Friday is my off day and Saturday I'll swim in the SMU 50m pool again at 11 but can go to the Landry Center that evening if I need a couple thousand more to hit the magic 20k mark.

Bike and run are still going nicely. I'm looking forward to my first race at the Athens Tri on March 8th. Sub 18 off the bike baby!!

April 20th is looming ever larger. Thats my shot to qualify for worlds again this year and my chances are looking pretty decent. However, I know I have to stay focused and lately I've been able to do that much better. Sleep and nutrition are the two things that I've worked on to be able to keep improving. You can train all you want but if your body doesn't have the proper fuel and you aren't giving it time to repair itself (sleep) then the training will just negate itself. It isn't always easy but with a clear goal in mind I've found it easier to cut down on the fun stuff with friends and late(r) nights on the weekends.

It was pretty funny when I was at dinner about a week ago and started yawning around 9 ish. I mentioned that normally at 9 I'm either in bed already or headed that way. They looked at me with mouths agape. Complete shock froze their faces into expressions of wonderment. I frequently catch flak for not being willing to hang out late. Or I have to train so I can't do stuff on the weekends. I don't like spending money because I know all the races and events I have to pay for this year, not to mention the equipment. Ahhh welll, if thats WHAT IT TAKES- then so be it.

Breakthrough

AH YEAH!!

Ok so I'm a little stoked, to say the least. I had a pretty major breakthrough run workout yesterday. It's something I'm still trying to rationalize in my head how I did that. Lets go through a quick run down of the day-

7:30 am- Got to sleep in a little today as I was swimming later so it felt nice not having to get up super early.
9:00- Private lesson with a kid at the Tom Landry Center.
11:05- After driving around in circles I finally found a spot to park at SMU so I could go swim at their 50m outdoor pool. Im supposed to have a pass to park in this garage but its saturday so who cares right?
12:30- Good swim workout. Its kinda cool when you do 1 lap and thats already a 100 meters. Went and check out the meet going on inside. UT vs SMU and let me tell you: I've never seen lats that big on girls!! Found my car again and thankfully it was still there.
3:00- After going home, napping, and just chilling for a while it was time to get the real work done. First was a 1:30 ride. It went as follows:

10 min warmup
3x15 min in my 53x12 at 60-70 cadence with 5 min recovery in between.
2x3 min HAMMER! Max efforts with 3 min recovery.
20 min at zone 3 i.e. 22-24 mph.

Needless to say my legs were a little tired when I got off the bike but there was still a tough run to transition into.

I did:
20 min at Z4-Z5. This translated to me running 6:00 miles for 3.3 miles! Or 20 minutes. I've never done a workout like that in my life. I couldn't believe it as I hit the mile markers. Especially as I didn't feel like I was going that fast at all. My coach explained to me what she had changed up to result in such an improvement. Now it makes sense and I'm even more excited then ever.


Today was a longish run and even though my quads were pretty trashed and I didn't feel that great I still did 7:17 miles for the whole 9.7 miles on a hilly course.

If I could just get my swimming to improve like that I would be set.

Happy training to you.

Change

Hopefully I'll have some really good news to report here in a week or so. It looks like I'm college bound this fall. And I don't mean no Eastfield Community Colellege. I'm talking a real 'rootin tootin' state university. I applied yesterday so hopefully I'll be getting the word back next week. I've also talked to the cross country coach there and he's very excited about me coming out to run with them. I'm pretty much stoked out of my mind. Being homeschoooled all my high school years I never got a chance to swim or run on any sort of team. This will be my first oppurtunity to do that and hopefully it will help take my run to a much higher level.

Another pro is that the coach is a 7-time Ironman finisher and many of the runners there do triathlons as well. Cross training is a big part of their program and its good to know that I won't have a coach who insists I quit everything else just to run for him.

In fact I've been talking to my coach and we've decided that it will probably be best for me to take a couple years and really focus on the swim. I know this is what I'lll need if I every want to be even come close to hanging with some of the U23 or hopefully pro ITU guys. Swimming 8-10 times a week, week after week, month after month, for a couple years is what I need. *sigh* oh well. I have grown to hate my swim workouts a little less over the last 6 months and I have been getting stronger so that is encouraging. Next week I'll try to get in 6 or 7 workouts for the week and see what my shoulders have to say about that.

On a school note I believe that I am living proof that procrastination works. Goverment test on Tuesday. I was really motivated for this one as it was the first test of the semester and I wasn't sure what to expect. I really put my head down and studied for all I was worth... the 20 minutes before class. I came out with a 92. Next up- history test Monday. I bet that same strategy will work again...

Four Weeks in and All's Well

Nothing really new to post for now. I have a feeling that school is going to start getting much more difficult here in the oncoming weeks.

Training is still pretty solid. It's just getting harder to fit it in because I'm working more hours now as well. Its funny becaue none of the things I do in and of themselves require a hug commitment. 16 hours of classes? Yeah, lots of people do that. No biggie. Working 20 hours a week? So what thats only part time. Training 15-20 hours per week? Fairly average for a decent age group triathlete. Well lets total that up and we get over 50 hours per week. Not including time spent working on school outside of class.

The other issue is that of sleep. Or lack thereof I should say. For most people getting less then 7-8 hrs night isn't anything to worry about. In fact many friends I have routinely get by on less then 6. But what if your training 2-3 hours a day. In that case you need MORE sleep to help your body recover properly and if you don't get the correct amount your training and performance will begin to suffer. Thats no good. Elite athletes typically get 8-10 hours of sleep a nigh with naps during the day too!! Ahhh.. to be a pro.

That being said It'ss 10 o'clock and the alarm rings at 5 tomorrow. Good night.