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
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
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!
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!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, May 5, 2008
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
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
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