It's That Time of Year

Yup, It's that time of year again. That time when the evening get dark before you can boil a pot of water on a propane stove. That time when warm apple cider and hot cocoa sound better than an ice cream sundae or a snow cone. That time when you have more and more frequent "blustery days" and a jacket does you better than a tank top and flip flops. It's fall (or Autumn for those who are more particular) here in Texas and I am enjoying ever minute of it! While those states in the northern part of the USA have already been getting an unhealthy dose of winter, those of us in Texas have just started to nibble at the deliciousness of a few sub 80-degree days. Sometimes, in the midst of scorching bike rides and run workouts beneath the blistering sun I forget how much I like being outside! When the weather is nice it makes life just plain enjoyable! I love that.

Along with the cooler weather has come a (much needed) offseason for me. Following my disappointing DNF at the Toyota US Open I wasted no time starting my offseason right. I ate bad foods, drank some alcohol (but only in moderation), slept in every morning, and generally just tried to make myself a blob as much as possible. I absolutely loved every minute of it too!! After about 10 days of that I started to get the itch to be a little more active. I'd throw in a run here and there and started doing about 1 workout a day. Nothing serious but I do enjoy being active. After another 10 days of that I was fully refreshed and looking forward to starting some hard work again. NOT!

After my 3 week break I showed up at swim practice on Monday at 5:30am unsure of whether I wanted to start this whole "training" thing again. I met with my coach later that week and she reassured me that there would be very limited intensity in my training and my main focus for the next 2 months was going to be- swim, bike a lot, run, strength and to get out and have fun. Now that I can do. So with renewed vigor and ever increasing drive I am now 2.5 weeks into the first real base season I've ever had. I don't feel like I've lost much fitness since the US Open but I am very mentally refreshed. My training is pretty unstructered. My coach tells me to bike x hours this week and run y hours then I figure out when I do it. It's a great set-up that lets me be flexible and enjoy it which is nice especially with all the traveling I'll be doing in the upcoming weeks.

All this to say it's that time of year. That time to build a solid base for next year. That time to have fun and ride the mountain bike and run some trails. That time to enjoy a few extra desserts and drink some sugary apple cider. That time to have fun and enjoy the weather. I love that time!

The Brownlee brothers

Great video from the Brownlee brothers. It's all about consistency. The first part is a Monty Python spoof but it gets real interesting around minute 4.

Originial source from Tri247.

http://www.tri247.com/article_9287_Brownlees+talk+Yorkshire.html?region_id=&category

Recommended Reading

Recommended Reading from Colorblind Films on Vimeo.

Offseason

Yesterday my fiance told me that I "need to update [my] blog." And since I am a sensible person who understands that the #1 key to a successful relationship is always doing what your wife tells you, I am going to get a jumpstart on practicing for married life and do just that. Oh, did I not mention I was engaged? Well yes, yes I am. Happened a little over a month ago and we're looking forward to trading vows coming this January on the 7th.

After the US Open Triathlon debacle I took 3 weeks off as I was very ready to be done with the season. I spent a good 10 days of doing nearly no physical activity, sleeping A LOT and trying to eat all the bad food I could. After that I started doing some mild workouts here and there as the urge struck me. Last week I started getting back into the swing of things with 3 swims a gym workout and some light running every day. I've been helping my fiance with some of her XC workouts as her season is still going and she's pretty quick so that has helped me keep some good leg turnover. She got 10th at conference a week ago and has regionals in Wichita Falls this weekend so go Jess!!!

I also have to give a shout out to the UT Tyler cross country team who won Conference for the 7th time this last weekend! Nice job guys and go Patriots! They will be racing regionals in 2 weeks down in Seguin, Tx.

The rest of this fall is going to be quite busy for me as I help with wedding planning, tutor, take an online class, work on my internship at UTSA and fit in some training. It's base season time and I'm excited about putting some long, slow miles in and just having fun with training. After a summer of high heat and intensity I'm ready to just get outside and play. Busy, busy but that's how I like to keep things!

Summer Training and Racing Recap

Whoah. A LOT has happened since I updated last so let me see if I can do a quick run down.

Race results:

2nd Marble Falls Triathlon

31st overall and 14th 20-24 at USAT Age Group Nationals

9th Austin Triathlon (2nd amateur)

1st Rose City Triathlon

DNF Toyota US Open

A quick recap for some of the key races.

Age Group Nationals- This took place in Burlington, Vermont on the shores of lake Champlain this year. Love, love, LOVE that town. Such a great atmosphere, beautiful scenery and so NOT 100 degrees! I felt really good leading into the race and performed well. Went a bit off course in the swim because I was the 2nd to last wave to go and all the waves in front of us had started drifting out to see as they went around the 2nd turn buoy. I followed them for a while before I noticed my mistake and cut back onto a straight path to the next buoy. I had a much better race than last year and even with the swim snafu had my best time yet for an Olympic distance race. I didn't place as well just because the competition has gotten that much deeper. 4 of the top 5 overall were in my age group.

Austin Tri- Another solid race. Had some back issues on the bike and my bike split is continually not as strong as I'd like. A cool day though and I had a HUGE run PR coming off the bike which was a great feeling.

Rose City- Regional Championships in Tyler, Tx where I went/am going to college. Took the win and course record in a fun race and brought home some prize money to boot.

Toyota US Open- My first dnf in 10 years of racing occurred here and the circumstances surrounding it are a bit suspect.

6:15am: I air up my tires to 130 psi

6:30am: Quick, 10min bike warm up on the course

6:45am: Rack my bike, run warm up, head to swim start

7:30am: Race start

7:54am: I jump on my bike and start pedaling up the hill and immediately notice something is not right. At the top of the 100m hill I jump off my bike and check my tires. Yup, sure enough, my back tire is completely and totally flat. There is absolutely no air in it.

7:56am: I run back down the hill to try and find a pump but am told I can't take outside assistance and there is no bike support. I turn my chip in and re-rack. Then go watch Javier Gomez dominate the run and win the race.

9:50am: At my car I air up the tire again to try and find the leak. I figure I must have picked something up on the warm up. I can't find anything and it appears to be holding air just fine.

11:50am: After eating breakfast my tire still has full pressure

7:00pm: Arrive back in San Antonio. Tire still has full pressure

7:30am the next morning: Still about 100 psi in the tire.

I've tried to figure out how a tire can go from 130 psi to completely flat in 90min and yet hold air when pumped up again. The ONLY explanation I can think of is that someone intentionally let the air out of my tire. I don't know why or how but that's the only possibility. Its pretty frustrating to be robbed of a race like that. Stolen from me without my asking. I'm in the best running shape of my life right now and would have really appreciated another opportunity to PR my run split. It's hard to believe someone would intentionally undermine another competitors race in that manner but I guess it happens.

Its off season now and I have a solid 2 weeks off of any form of structered training. I'm looking forward to this time to relax, look back at the year and think ahead towards next year. Here are a few random pictures I've included-

Rose City Winnings

Austin Tri with friends and family

Marble Falls

Drug testing at Age Group Nationals

San Antonio

It's been a couple months and there have been a few changes in my life since I raced Collegiate Nationals. For one thing I have officially moved to the city of San Antonio, TX. I'm here for good, (Or at least until God calls me somewhere else) and really excited about the change and the opportunities.

My team, IconOne Multisport is based out of San Antonio and I have been coming down here for the last four summers to live and train. I'm super stoked to be down here year round though and hope it will enable me to take my racing and training to another level. I have a great family that has let me stay with them during the summer for the last few years and I'm staying with them again. They are a huge blessing so thank you Riley family!!! I have a lot of family in Austin which is just an hour north and my girlfriend lives in San Antonio and trains with IconOne as well so I'm super happy to be here!

It hasn't taken long for me to see some improvements and my training has been going really well since I moved down. I raced the Capitol of Texas Triathlon on Memorial day which is part of the Lifetime Fitness Race to the Toyota Cup this year. I had a solid performance there and garnered a 3rd place overall amateur earning me my right to a pro card in triathlon!! This has been a dream of mine for a long time so its very cool to have finally attained it! I realize what a long way I still have to go though to even be able to compete at the professional level and since I have 12 months to accept it I'm going to hold off a bit and see how I do the rest of the year. My goal for this year is to be consistent with my racing and to continue to improve. I also just upgraded to a category 3 cyclist and my biking is going really well right now. So far, so good and I'm excited to see what the rest of my year will bring.

I have a rough idea of my race schedule for the rest of the year and here's what I think it will look like:

-July 17: Disco Triathlon in Dallas, Tx

-August 20: Age Group Nationals in Vermont.

-September 5th: The AVIA Austin Triathlon

-September 17th: Rose City Triathlon in Tyler, Tx.

-October 2nd: Toyota US Open in Dallas, Tx

I'm currently working on a resume so I can start trying to get some sponsors and build a support team. If you have any suggestions or are interested in supporting an ambitious young triathlete please send me a message or email!!

It's going to be a busy next few months for me but I think I can make it happen. This summer I'm taking a full load of graduate classes online (3) as well as working in the lab at UTSA, helping with triathlon camps and training 20+ hours a week on top of that. There's not a lot of free time in there but thats alright. In the fall I will be doing my internship in the lab at UTSA as well as taking an additional class and my goal is to graduate December of 2011 and be done with school!!! I will also be tutoring in the fall to pay the bills and oh yes- still training and trying to get to the level I need to be at to race professionally. It will be tough but God is good and He watches over His children. I have no idea what this next year is going to bring but I'm excited about the future!!

Collegiate Nationals

Well my 3rd and most likely final Collegiate National Championships have come and gone. Since my plan is to take summer classes and then graduate with my Masters in Kinesiology in December I'm not sure I'll get another shot at competing in this unique race. The atmosphere at collegiate nationals is like none other. No other event draws 1000+ triathletes between the ages of 18 and 28 together for a weekend. The team experience makes the event even more special and there are plenty of crazy costumes, loud cheering and such an overflow of enthusiasm that you can't help but have fun.

This year UT Tyler was bringing a team of 7 and after a short hold up when a member of the team dropped his newton running shoe down the sewer, we were on our way. I was driving and lodging separate from the team this year so I could focus on my race but a big thanks to Hector Moreno for riding with me on the way out and helping with the driving some! We stopped 5 or 6 times throughout the drive, including dinner at Ryan's all-you-can-eat cafe and so we rolled into Tuscaloosa, AL around 9pm thursday night. I left the team to fend for themselves at the somewhat dubious, $40 a night, lodging they had found and headed to the Holiday Inn Express.

Friday morning I was up and out the door for my run. Breakfast (and coffee) at the hotel, then drive to the race site to pick up my packet, ride the course and jump in the water for a 20min swim in my brand new XTERRA wetsuit. Lunch at Chipotle then I layed low the rest of the afternoon before joining are guys to drive to the free pasta dinner. The dinner was... well it was free.

Race morning I awoke at 4:55 am, drank some coffee and an Emergen-C, ate 3/4 of a bagel, a muffin and some steel cut oats. Packed my bottles and gear and headed to transition. I had to wait in line about 20-25min to get in to transition, and then another 15min or so to use the restroom so I didn't have much warm up time. I was over at the swim start 30min prior to race start though so I could make sure and get a swim warm up in.

Race started and I was off. My swim was... terrible. I'm not a good swimmer by any means. It's my achilles heel in triathlon and I've tried many different things over the years but I don't seem to ever improve. Race day was no better and I felt like I was just floundering, spinning my arms the whole time. I think a large part of it was due to the fact that I was using a brand new wetsuit and hadn't swam in a wetsuit or open water since Age group nationals in september of 2010. The wetsuit puts my body in a completely different position and I didn't know how to deal with it. I had no catch, pull or rotation working together and came out of the water wayyyy back.

I'm used to coming out of the water behind, and I didn't really know HOW far back I was so I jumped on my bike and went for it. I had a pretty solid bike ride. There was definitely quite a bit of drafting going on but the officials did a pretty good job of policing. I'm sure I drafted at some point but I tried my best to stay legal while still hanging with the group of guys. I've learned that biking in these non-drafting races is more about paying attention and conserving your energy to make a move and try to gap the pack then it is about just riding your race. If you ride your race you will end up drafting so you have to watch to make sure you maintain proper positioning.

I came off the bike and started the run. I had a gel I was planning on taking at the first aid station but it fell out of my suit coming off the bike and that proved to be fatal. Miles 1-3 I was cruising and felt really, really good. I was reeling people in and knocking them down like nobodies business. After mile 3 I started feeling some fatigue and around mile 4 was when the wheels started to come off. By mile 5 I was in survival mode and literally counting my steps to the finish line. (all 527 of them).

I ended up 27th overall, 7th grad student with a time of 2:04:20. The bike was 1-2min slower then Age group nationals last year and we had a 400m run from swim exit to transition so my time is on-par or a little faster then where I left off last year. I made some errors and have some things to work on but overall it was a decent start to the year and I'm looking forward to some more races!

Weekend report from March 5 - 7

This is Moe

Moe's a good 'ole boy and he puts on a mean half marathon at the outlet mall in San Marcos, Tx. A cool morning, plenty of hills, ignorant volunteers and some great post race fruit snacks all combined to make for an excellent for a great race at the Moe's Better Half Marathon this weekend.

I should backtrack a tad though because my weekend didn't start with Moe it started with Jack. Jack Weiss that is and a triathlon in Athens, Tx.

As a graduate assistant at UT Tyler, Fridays are my long day of teaching. We have 5 exercise physiology labs that day running from 8 am to 5 pm. It's kind of lacking having a real job, with real hours once a week and it sucks. I teach the two morning labs, then assistant during the afternoon so I usually get there about 7:30 am to open things up. I did most of my packing the night before but was up at 5 am to load my bike and other stuff in the car before meeting a group of guys from church for breakfast at Einstein Bagels like we do every Friday morning at 6 am.

After teaching from 8-11 am I changed quickly and got in a brief pre-race bike workout over lunch. Crammed down a couple sandwiches then back in the lab to work until about 4:30. Off to swim practice then out of the pool and driving to Athens for the FREE pre-race pasta dinner. Packet pick up then I crashed in a roll-out bed in my pastor's hotel room. Thanks Cliff!!

Race morning dawned cold and windy. Luckily I had naught but a skimpy speedo to wear so of course I had a great race! Well greatness in this case was defined by a win but my time was 3 minutes slower than last year. I'm blaming it all on the wind...



In the car as soon as they let me and I was headed south to San Anton. My gf was running in a track meet and I made it in time to watch her pr and set school records in the 1500 and 5k! She broke 19min in the 5k with an 18:55 which is killer! Dropped a 79sec last quarter which means she would have outkicked me if we were together at a lap to go.

The next morning was my first half marathon. Yes, this is where Moe comes in. It was a cool morning but perfect running whether. My legs felt surprisingly fresh on my warm up jog back and forth to the porta-potty which was a surprise given the race and drive I'd had yesterday. I had no idea what to expect so I decided to just start off running 6min pace and see what happened.

I ran with another guy named Daniel for the first 5 miles or so and we were actually running closer to 5:45 pace. I felt alright though so I just kept it rolling and he started to fade back. It was a pretty hilly course and I had been told (by Daniel) that the race doesn't start til the last 5k. Well the word I'd heard was that the race leader was gunning for a 1:17 and as he was only 20sec up on me going through mile 6 I decided I would try to catch him. So I did. Took me until mile 9.5 but I caught him. We ran together for about 2 miles and he surged hard mile 10 to 11 which was my fastest mile of the day. The last 2 miles have some decent hills in them and I was able to pull away from him to win by about 20sec with a 1:16:49. I was pretty stoked as this is the first running race I've ever won before! There were a total of 5 iconone teammates at the race so it was fun to hang out with them as well. A great weekend and fun racing!

Big things coming

It's 7 weeks into the 2011 season and semester and things are going pretty well. Training is going well and its been fun to see the consistent improvements from week to week this early in the year. Some quick updates of life and living:

-I've got my first tri of the year this saturday. The Athens sprint triathlon. It's in Athens, Tx and is a little, local race with a pool swim and unpredictable weather. I won the race last year so I'm looking to repeat and go even faster this year.

-My first real half marathon this weekend too! After the race on Saturday I'll be driving down to San Antonio and doing a small half marathon in San Marcos on Sunday. A bunch of people on IconOne are doing it so it should be a lot of fun!

-Probably the biggest thing to announce is the fact that I'll be moving to San Antonio come May. I got offered a job down there and have wanted to live there to be close to my coach and my team for quite a few years now and I think God is finally opening up the doors for me to make the move. I'll be taking summer classes online and then do my internship in the fall so I can graduate with my M.S. in Kinesiology in December of 2011.

-Time to hit the pool!!

2011

So XC came and went. My last post saw me at the height of my season as the last two meets weren't too great. Having a poor race at regionals was especially a bummer as I knew I was really fit. Bad race tactics is what did me in though. The whole season I had been taking the first mile out conservative and building into the race. It was normal for me to be in about 10th place on the team through the mile but then reel people in and finish somewhere 3rd-5th on the team. At regionals, for some crazy reason, I decided to change my strategy and go out hard the first mile with everyone else. My goal was to put myself in a good position so I could contend up front. It didn't quite work out that way... Because I wasn't used to go anaerobic so early in the race I tanked after the mile and never really recovered throughout the race. Another learning experience for sure. I had a lot of those in 2010.

After that I took a solid 2 weeks off with no training and then have just been playing around, having fun, working out sporadically since late November. I've worked out almost every day since then but it has been really random with no structure whatsoever. I start official workouts with coach Shelly tomorrow and am pretty excited to get back to some structure. I joined a swim team this spring and just had my second practice tonight. Ouch. My arms and shoulders are already feeling it big time. Luckily I'll only be swimming 4 nights a week with them. I'm tired of the swim being a continual weakness for me so I'm taking the best steps I know of to fix that.

I'm also starting my second semester of grad school, working 20 hours a week in the department and training on top of that so I should stay busy. Collegiate Nationals is April 9th so its time to get to work!