There's been a lot of ground covered since my initial post at the beginning of the year. A lot of flip turns, chamois butter and sugary sports drinks. All that goes into the process of gaining fitness and preparing for racing. My ramp up has been a little slower this year with a little more focus on base/strength/endurance in the early season. It will be a long year so we haven't wanted to jump into high intensity too quick.
A few weeks ago I had a great opportunity to participate in a pro/elite age grouper training camp in Denver, Colorado hosted by USAT 2010 Coach of the Year, Melissa Mantak. It was a great opportunity to train "like a pro" for a whole week. All we did was eat, sleep, train and repeat. It's amazing how much training you can do when all your focused on between workouts is getting ready for the next one! We had a really good group of people there including Ryan Borger, Jordan Jones, Mark Hillers, Brandon Nied, Steven Garza, Alex Hooke, Beth Shutt and myself. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun and walked away with a lot more fitness than I came into the camp with. I want to say a BIG thank you to Melissa for opening her home up to us athletes. She donated her entire week to coaching us in the pool, videotaping us, driving SAG, teaching and talking with us and I'm very grateful and thankful for the insight I gained from her.
I had one week after camp to recover before racing the South Midwest Region Collegiate Qualifier in Dallas, Tx. I was very excited to get out there and race since it's been over 6 months since I completed a triathlon! My wife, Jessica, and I drove up the night before and crashed at my parents house along with the rest of the UT Tyler Multisport Club. Jess was racing for her school, St. Mary's University to qualify as an individual slot.
Race morning was a 5:15am wake up which doesn't feel to bad when you're used to getting up at 4:30 a lot of mornings to swim. Check-in, body marking, transition set-up, warm-up, yada, yada, yada. Same stuff before every race. Soon we were in the water waiting to go. This race was a "Spolympic" as I liked to call it. 1000m swim, 19mi bike, 5 mi run. There were around 120 guys packed into a pretty small area at the start and when the gun went off there was a lot of the normal thrashing, kicking, grabbing, swimming on top of people, etc. that goes on. I really struggle with open water starts for some reason and have a hard time settling into a rhythm and finding my stroke when I go out hard. I missed the first pack but found a couple guys to draft off of and exited the water only about 40sec down from Ben Hall from Louisiana Tech who was one of the top contenders. Looking back on my time and how I felt in the water confirmed to me that I really need to get in open water and practice going hard and using my wetsuit.
I had a quick T2 and was 4th or 5th onto the bike, and moved into 2nd place within the first mile. Ben Hall was only 20sec up the road and I knew he is a strong biker so I pushed hard the first 5 miles to try and get close to him. I got to within about 8sec but then we hit a turn around and after seeing me he punched it and started to open up a gap. I made the mistake of tightening my shoe strap at the same time and he was gone. The bike was completely flat. We did 2 loops across a damn and back. We had some cross wind but not too terrible. I was trying to push as hard as possible but wasn't able to get my HR very high. My back started tightening up the second half like it seems to always do. When Scott Wilkinson from A&M came by me with 4 miles to go I realized I had been pushing a really low cadence which I think may have attributed to my back. I used Scott to pace off of the last part of the bike and we came into and out of T2 nearly together.
Starting the run Scott was about 2 seconds ahead of me and Ben Hall was a minute down the road. Scott took off and I decided to try and build my run and not gun it from the start- bad decision. Scott kept pulling away until he caught Ben at mile 2. I caught Ben at mile 3 and Scott was about 20sec up the road. He hadn't pulled away anymore since the 1.5 mile mark and I thought I might be able to catch him if I pushed too hard. However, for whatever reason be it lack of mental strength or just not enough intensity in training yet I didn't. Instead I settled where I was, in a comfortable rhythm and let myself run across the line in second. Mark Primeaux from LSU and Keith Kotar of Oklahoma State where running fast behind me but I had a big lead on them and knew they wouldn't catch me. I ended up "winning" the race because Scott had some academic issues that kept him out of the collegiate competition but it was a hollow victory. Overall I was very, very pleased with how the race played out and my fitness level. It's now time to start moving into some higher intensity work which will give me those top end gears I need to really push the pace and make myself hurt.
My wife did great in her race taking 2nd overall female and nabbing her spot for Nationals! I'm also super proud of the UT Tyler guys. We took 4th male team out of 10 teams which is huge for our little squad! They're a fun group of guys and I love being able to meet up with them and help our squad do well.
Collegiate Nationals is 2 weeks away and then the season will really start to get going. I'm excited about this year and progress I've made already.
