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On Sale: Tickets To See The Shit Show

Friday, March 9th, 2012

Two weeks ago, I went spent a few days in NY and NJ for work and managed to bring back a nasty cold with me. I even vividly remember walking past a well dressed old man by Penn Station whose mother apparently never taught him about covering his mouth when he coughed. My cough would sound exactly like his two days later.

I shake my fist in the air in your general direction. You’ll get what is coming to you.

It shut down my training completely, and I lost a TON of sleep due to a constant flow of snot from my face and relentless coughing that didn’t care what combination of drugs I tried to attack it with. Coach Hirsch put me on the bench until further notice.

Only two days ago did I actually start to feel normal again and gently eased back into training. I’ve still had to use my sweat towel on the bike trainer to catch some last remnants of bloody snot dripping from my face, but I can safely say that I’m 95% over it.

Now that the doctor and Hirshey gave me the green light to jump back into training, you’d think I’d be jumping for joy and itching to put my training plan in a strangle hold, but I’m not. Not even a little bit. Apparently two weeks is enough time to completely lose your training motivation. I had a nice routine going, but now it is completely gone. Blurg.

Making it (slightly) worse is that I recovered from the cold JUST IN TIME for my Master’s swim meet on Saturday – meaning I can’t even try to force myself back into a rhythm. Gottta stay fresh for the meet! The silver lining is that aside from some possible muscle atrophy (kidding…hopefully) I’m as fresh as a daisy! The highest my heart rate has gotten in the last two weeks has been when I had to run into another room to grab a tissue and prevent a river of goobers from covering my face. (Note to self – make sure I warm up extra and remind myself how to swim before the race.)

Needless to say, any expectations of stellar performances at the meet tomorrow have been thrown aside. Thankfully, other than my two week hiatus, the last 2.5 months have seen some pretty solid and frequent swim sessions. It’ll be interesting to see how much of that stuck with me.

I can hope, but at the very least, this weekend will be a complete shit show – and absurdly entertaining if I forget how to swim all together.

| Posted in Swimming, Training Log, Triathlon | 2 Comments »

It Never Hurts Less

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

But if you do it right, you can make the hurt end sooner….

Sunday was the annual early season fitness test/suffer fest. 10k computrainer TT. Coach was iffy about me doing it as my first “race” of 2012 since my real focus for the last two months has been in the pool, but I jumped in anyway because it is a fun fitness test. I just figured I’d roll with it and not put too much emphasis on the results.

Somehow my poor directions, timing or plain stupidity got me to the bike shop 10 minutes before my heat started. Not ideal for warming up. I did manage to snag a spot next to Trakkers alum, Elaine, who was TOTALLY hoarding the only fan. What a jerk.

Working hard. Going nowhere. Sweating my face off.

I could geek out and tell you the story of my power numbers, but let’s try this version instead:

I pedaled hard. Then it hurt. Then I drifted. Then I tried to pedal hard, but I was weak. Repeat that for about 17 minutes and that was pretty much it.

Faster than I was two years ago with a LOT more bike training and working as a spin instructor. Sweet.

But the best part? As soon as you finish, a guy walks up out of nowhere and cracks open a beer for me. Cheers!

| Posted in Cycling, Spinning, Training Log, Triathlon | 3 Comments »

Chasing Bubbles

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

That has been my workout theme for the past few weeks. Bubbles.

At my usual swimming spot, I’m almost always the fastest person in the water, and I’m not even a speedy swimmer. Lots of aquasizers and aquajoggers. It is hard to push yourself when you are doing solo workouts and you don’t have a carrot (or bubbles) in front of you to chase. Because of that (and not giving an honest effort effort and addressing the swim as my biggest weakness) my swim times for the last few years have hit a major plateau. No more.

I officially joined Cambridge Masters for the winter and I’m FAR from the fastest person in the new pool. Outside of one year on HS swim team, I’ve never really been a swimmer. Going back to something after almost 10 years out is definitely a little scary, but going outside of your comfort zone is how you grow, right? And this time I’m not using it as an excuse to hang out with cute athletic high school girls in bathing suits all winter. It is all business.

Now I’m not even the fastest person in my slowpoke lane. I love it. Plenty of bubbles to chase to and keep me swimming till my arms fall off!

I’ve even convinced a new local Team Rev3 recruit, Julia, to join with me this winter. She is wicked fast and I have no business being in the same lane as her, but knowing she’ll be waiting for me to pick her up when my alarm goes off at 4:45 am is good motivation to get up and moving. We’ve even got some sweet custom Rev3 suits on order! Can’t wait to rock them this winter.

Today was an annual NYE 100×100 fundraiser. I was relegated to the “slow kids pool” way on the other end, but had a great session. With only a few weeks of serious swimming under my belt after a long break from Sept-December, I had no business doing all 100. I gracefully bowed out after 25, but was really happy that I kept to 1:45 intervals and managed a solid :10 rest between. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. And I do.

Onward and upward! There are more bubbles out there to chase!

Question- Anyone have any good swimming/shoulder stretches? With all the time pushing myself in the pool (more than I have in a really long time), I want to make sure to keep my shoulders happy. They are definitely feeling it the most.

| Posted in Swimming, Training Log, Triathlon | 4 Comments »

2011 Season Review

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

Let’s do a quick recap of the 2011 season. My two main goals were to find ways to give back to the triathlon community and qualify for USAT Age Group Nationals.

Giving back? I think I did pretty well. I loaned out my old trainer to a friend training for Rev3 Cedar Point, volunteered at Quassy and another local sprint. Gotta think of some more creative ways to give back for next season.

Nationals? Done. I went, had a blast and improved my olympic-distance PR by about 15 minutes! It was a lot of fun, and I hope to make it back. The one thing that I didn’t like was the whole qualifying process. The qualifying criteria was fair, but it was just a big psychology change for me to be competing against the top guys in my age group instead of just myself and the clock.

I’m very competitive, but I’ve never cared about what anyone else in my age group was doing while I raced. I rarely ever looked down at people’s calves to see if they were in my AG. I just stuck to my own race and tried to meet or beat the standards that I set or myself. My competition used to be all internal. This year, it was all about competing with other M25-29ers. I wasn’t used to it at all. I ended up turning into “that guy” walking around transition before a tiny local sprint, nervously stalking the competition. Even at a tiny local sprint triathlon. Not awesome.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just different. And I wasn’t used to it at all. If I continue down the route of being more competitive within my age group, I’ve gotta get my head straight so I don’t let that get away from me and ruin my chances before the gun even goes off.

Other accomplishments this year? I trained hard enough to be FAST on the bike and had a ton of fun.