Reeling them in...

I've been spreading the word, and getting a lot of folks interested in triathlons. The short sprint tri that I do on Tuesday is the perfect distance to try if you feel like seeing what it's like to race.

It's a 1/4 mile swim, so that part is not as intimidating to newbies, and the rest is off-road so it sounds like a lot of fun to most people. This season I've managed to get an uncle, a cousin, two friends, and now my brother to give it a try. So far they all love it, and it makes it fun for me to be the "big brother" type to help them all out.

Don'tcha love this sport??.

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Ouch

I'm a hurtin puppy! Crashed on my mountain bike during the Farmington Race last Tuesday night and I've been out of condition with muscle spasms in my neck and back for the week and 1/2 since. Spent 3 days lying on the couch in a drugged stupor and the next four days in quite a bit of pain. I'm hoping to be back in the game and go for a run tomorrow morning but we'll see how it goes.

Hopefully this will be the last injury I get during my training for next years IM but we'll see.

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Busy Weekend

Fun and exciting weekend, I got fit and bought a new bike and I heard back from the charity I selected to represent for the Janus Charity Challenge.



Spent Saturday driving to and from Fitwex in Vermont for my bike fit with Sarah and Ian. Absolutely worth the trip!! I ulitmately picked out a Guru Cron'Alu, and have ordered it. The folks at Fitwerx spent 3 hours with me, measuring and adjusting and fiddling until I felt really comfortable in the aero position. Ian showed me how I could be more comfortable without compromising aerodynamics by videotaping my position from the side while he adjusted the bike. I feel really confident about my decision, which was critical considering the cost.

The second item of interest was that I heard back from Scott from The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, the charity that I've selected to represent for the Janus Charity Challenge. I've signed up, and hope to raise some money for cancer research.

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Mental Breakthrough

There is a local sprint race that runs every Tues. night during the summer that is quite a bit of fun. It's called the Winding Trails Tri-Training series, and is a 1/4 mile swim, 5 mile mountain-bike, and 3.1 mile trail run. This is the race that first got me started in Triathlon's 3 years ago, and has been a lot of fun ever since. My best ever time was 1:05:14 last year, and I've been struggling with my pace since most of my training is more long distance oriented.

Last night I set a new record in 1:03:37 by finally breaking through mentally. I'm not a great runner, and have struggled to run under 30 minutes at this race. Part of the issue is that I think that I'm not a good runner... but also I haven't really pushed. Last night I felt pretty good, but mostly I decided to just go for it, and deal with the pain. I've often heard that sprint racing is tougher mentally because to excel you simply need to go as hard as you can without worrying about blowing up. I feel like I finally turned the corner last night as I ended up running in the 27 minute range, hurting most of the way but really pushing hard the whole way. It feels great today to know that I can really run the whole course instead of just managing the race.

Now if I can break an hour...

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Vacation week is over

Back from vacation at the cape, and a solid training week. I did close to 125 miles on the bike and 20+ miles running as well as getting 2 swimming sessions in while being on vacation and keeping my wife and kids happy. Not too bad, although of course I'm going to need to ramp things up in the future. I do feel like I'm laying a pretty solid base, and I want to be careful of getting burned out to quickly, I still have about 50 weeks to go ;)

Researching some charities as well this week, I want to sign up for the Janus Charity Challenge so something/someone gets some benefit out of this madness!

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