Oh wait, but there is news. I have a new website! Hurry on over to www.marksaroni.com to check it out! HUGE, thanks to Jeremy Brown for being a designmastergeniuswebguru and putting all this together for me. They guy is good at what he does and if you need a website designed I would definitely recommend him. He's actually worked with quite a few athletes and is very good at capturing the personality of the person and finding a unique look that really displays "you" to the public. I'll still be posting blog updates here for now and there is a link on my site to navigate you over.
To be completely honest regarding my "Top 10" post, by the time I posted my offseason tips my offseason was actually over and I was already preparing for the next season. I planned for the week of Christmas to be a bit of a recovery week as I knew there would be a lot of travel and I'd much rather be spending time with family and eating lots of cookies than actually training. Jess and I spent Christmas in Austin at my grandparent's ranch where I spent 3 days completely consumed with playing Settler's of Catan. My family loves board games and Settler's is especially addicting, if you haven't heard of it than you definitely need to check it out.
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| Brick for ore anyone? |
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| Minor league hockey game |
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Following our return we had a raucous News Years Eve consisting of my sick wife going to bed at 7:30 pm and me following shortly after 8. Oh what a thrilling life we lead! January 2nd we headed back up to Austin for a training camp with friends Ben Hall, Liz Baugher, Scott Wilkinson, Lauren Lewis and Chris Hoover. We stayed at my grandparent's ranch house which is a perfect place to host a training camp situated between Dripping Springs and Wimberley in the middle of the Texas hill country. The weather was cold and rainy all week but that didn't stop us from getting the work done. Ben is a man-bear on the bike and Scott is no slouch either and the two of them really made me hurt on our long ride. Overall the weekend was a great reminder to me of how much I can push even when I'm tired. Pictures are below. Unfortunately I am horrible at taking pictures during events but I promise we did some training and didn't just play ping pong and sit on cattle!
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| Ice bathing it up! |
The camp kick started me adding some quality workouts back into my training. Since November I'd been focusing much more on strength, technique and slowly increasing volume. During that time I include a lot of drills, plyometrics and overspeed work in my running to keep the neurological firing there. Biking is similar with a lot of single leg drills, spin ups and also some lower cadence work. Swimming is a bit different but the emphasis is still on technique and speed rather than hard threshold type sets. However, training camp announced the end of all that fun stuff!! Not completely but it was the beginning of much more structured training for me and since then I've been adding some tempo runs in and more quality in my bike workouts. I'm actually really pleased with where my fitness is at for this time of year as last year I was just getting back from my honeymoon around this time and starting from what felt like scratch. I just have to tell myself to keep being patient as it's a long year and I'm not racing until April.
One other thing I'd like add is that I got to go support my wife in running the 3M half marathon in Austin, Texas a week and a half ago. She absolutely killed it!! On a chilly day and after being sick for a week she ran a huge pr of 1:26:49!! Way to go wif wif!! Oh, I also failed to mention that she raced her first cyclocross race ever at the State Championship and placed 8th in the women's 3/4 after dropping her chain twice! I'm truly lucky to be married to such a talented woman!
That's all for now. Don't forget to check out my site at- www.marksaroni.com
