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.