Wiped! And other reflections...

First, great training weekend at Lake Placid:

Thurs - 6 hr bike with recov run after;
Fri - 2.4 mile TT swim (2 loops = 1:07 ish = a$ beatin'); recov ride and recov run in the afternoon;
Sat - 1 loop swim; QT2 team breakfast (carbo-load throw-down); hard 1-loop run on the run course (more a$ beatin') = knees bothered me a bit last third of the run and low back tight from all the swimming - but otherwise the L hip was strong.
Overall a great training weekend and fun to be around all the activity pre-race.

Since I wasn't staying for the race Sunday and sign-up Monday my original thought was to try and register Monday if it made it online... it didn't, for me anyway. Only thing left was community slots at $1,100. Well, even prior to that morning I pretty much decided NOT to go IM next year - the kids are still to dependent on mom and dad so taking more time to train away from time to parent isn't right for me (not at this point).

Instead, I will go back to what my plan for 2010 was supposed to be - heavy 70.3 racing (at least 3) in 2011 to build better durability to handle an IM later - if that's 2011 IM Kona then GREAT! If it's not till 2012 or beyond, so be it. 70.3 is fun, you can still go fast (-ish) and you can manage your life around the 10-20 hour training weeks. Others might say you can still do it, but for me, this is a better target moving forward. (but there still is that desire to race IM... when the time is right...).

So, continue on with the 2010 season. It's been flying by me this year as I got the late start, missed several early races and now it's August and only 3 weeks to Timberman 70.3.
Raced Old Colony with decent results (of course most of the top talent was either at Providence 70.3 that weekend or resting for LP - 'cept for Pat Dwyer, who killed it - dude is solid);
I bagged the Marlboro sprint to focus on training (that didn't' go well...) but will do Gloucester this coming weekend (good talent expected there - Team Psycho athletes for example). It will be good to see where I am among all that... only thing I'm really worried about is the 700+ athletes registered - much traffic to be expected with that many on a sprint course.

Last weekend I did very stupid thing on my Saturday ride (to Mt Wawa) - I went out hard, stayed hard, didn't properly feed/drink during the ride and ended up killing myself to the point
of bonking 3:40 into it. Damn! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! This is how I used to train (solo) and why I was always sore, sick, burning out before the end of the year and needing to take a year off... old way of dong it = NEGATIVE AFFECTS!

So not only did the bonk kill the rest of my Saturday - no run off the bike or even later in the day - but it destroyed me for Sunday as well. On Monday I STILL was feeling it's effects during my 60 minute Z1/Z2 run - felt great going out but the legs got tired at 45 minutes and for the FIRST TIME all season/year my L hip started to bother me. WTF?!?!?! Now I'm really pissed!
3 weeks to Timber, a sprint this Sunday where I won my AG last year, and now I am sore and hurting. Great - nice going jack-ass! There was a very specific reason for turning to Coach PW and QT2 Systems 2 years ago and that was to take the next step in triathlon, train right, train smart and continue to enjoy this sport for many, many more years to come (at a competitive level of course!).

So, now I will re-focus, get my sh*t together, get back on the plan and put the mistakes behind me (although I'm still sore and sluggish - lesson learned??? Oh yeah, lesson learned, this won't happen again!).

Moving on... next up is the Gloucester Sprint this Sunday. Looks like some minor course changes on the bike... and the run was short last year of the advertised distance but looks on paper to be a true 5k now (last yr just when I was ready to throw down the hammer and sprint the last 1/2 mile I was at the finish line - not this year... it's balls to the wall the whole run!).

After that its 2 weeks to Timber... not where I'd like to be in my fitness but will focus and see what happens.

Then Pumpkinman (sprint or half, not sure yet since my son's b-day is the half date and I haven't sprung it on the Mrs yet that I would be gone... oops!) - then the Baystate Marathon in October (first marathon ever...). We'll see how the body holds up over the next 2 months.

Started thinking about a race schedule for 2011 already... more later.

That's it for now.

work2Bdone