Lake Placid

Last weekend I went ti Lake Placid to watch ironman and have a little vacation. I took my bike and a friend, Billy Macdonald. I swam the course (full 4 k) in about an hour and 7 minutes; did the bike course as well on quite a hot and windy day. Didn't time my self exactly but averaged about 30 k/hour which is what i would do in an ironman. I thought about signing up for 2012 but being there did not really make me want to do it again. I am already singed up for the new Tremblant ironman in August 2012 and that is probably enough.

I am finding that the summer is flying by as usual; Work is very busy and i havebeen training alot for the wordl ITU championships in China. I am not sure if I have plateaued a bit or am getting a bit tired. Sometimes, I think I may overtrain and overrace a bit. I have done so far this season: red island relay, china point duathlon, mooseman half iron, glenfinnan duathlon, canoe cove duathlon and fredericton triathlon. my performance in everyone improved quite a bit from last year. My running remains a challenge. I think it is faster than last year but i almost have a bit of a mental block about really pushing it. Today i did the Rustico duathlon as part of a three hour training day. I biked to it from charlottetown, raced and then biked to new glasgow and back to town. i was reasonably happy with my performance- 6th about of about 35-40 . i had my garmin on which i think i should do more often for running in races. I was running with my heart rate in a good spot (int eh low 14os) and was doing usually 4:30 ks or better. that would be 44-45 minutes 10 k. i can do better than that and would like to have it down around 42 in a race.

mid summer training

This is the time of year when training becomes more difficult: my enthusiasm wears off and i I start to get a bit tired from a lot of races. Last weekend, I did another duathlon and had a pretty good result (3rd). i was a bit disappointed with my run; running 46 minutes and something. i have been working at my running and have gottena bit faster but it is still a challenge. Otherwise, my training is going well. This past week i cycled for 4 hours on monday; swam on tuesday; ran twice on wednesday (7 k and 9 k) swam thursday and friday; cycled on thursday for an hour and a half; ran friday a speed workout and cycled for 3.5 hours saturday. That is about 18 hours which is a lot. My coach calls it "maintaining your aerobic base" which i think i used to fail to do. i would do lots of short races in previous summers but no long rides or runs. You do loose your base endurance when you do this. Tomorrow, I am going to go for a long run.

Improvement

I have now done about 4 races and shown quite a bit of improvement over last year, in each race. I have done two duathlons, a half ironman and the red island relay. my running in particular has improved but also my cycling. My enthusiasm for training and racing has been high but we have had a couple of days of bad weather and I have been feeling a bit lazy. I am doing a triathlon this coming weekend in Fredericton. NB and hope to keep on with the trend of showing improvement.

I have also changed my diet a bit with less carbs from bread and pasta and more protein, vegies and fruit. I am not sure yet how that is going to work with my training and racing as I used to eat alot of bread and bagels. We will see. I have lost a few pounds over the last week or so and am around 150 which is about as light as I have ever been in my adult life. Tomorrow i am scheduled to do a 3000 swim and a speed workout running. Wednesday is a two hour bike ride and another swim i think. I would like to try to do one of the cyling pei thursday night bike rides as they are very tough and good training.

Mooseman 2011

I think this is the 5th time i have done this race. I enjoy the trip down to New Hampshire and it is a good way to start the triathlon season. Last year it became part of the ironman 70.3 series and they made the bike course much more difficult. (probably added 15-20 minutes to everyones time) my times have ranged from 5 hours 3 minutes to 5 hours 36 minutes last year in the new course in extremely wet conditions. This year it was a nice day and i went alot harder on the bike. My bike time was 12 minutes faster than last year. I am a bit disappointed with my run time as it was slower than last year by about 2 and a half minutes. Overall, though, my time was 8 minutes faster than last year so i have to be happy with that. During the run today, my legs were very heavy and it never got any better. Usually that feeling goes away after you run for a bit. It can be partly due to going hard on the bike course. Also, I have been doing alot of short fast runs and haven't done a run like that after a really hard bike ride. I guess that is something to work on.

racing season

I did a duathlon last weekend and the red island relay this weekend. i was pleased with my performance in both races. i was second overall last weekend and second today in the solo division and 9th overall out of 73 teams. In both cases , it was quite a bit better then i did last year. i am particularly happy with my running. today, i passed a couple of people running that i have never passed before. my coaching i have been receiving from pro triathlete, Torsten Abel, is really been beneficial. Next weekend, i am doing the mooseman 70.3 so i hope this trend continues. i have been so busy racing that i have had much time to do a lot of training in between. But, i am looking forward to mooseman as it is always a fun roadtrip. Before i know it, my trip to China will be coming up in early sept for the ITU Worlds. I also decided last week to go to Lake Placid this summer to watch the race and sign up for next year. that should be fun as well. I will take my bike and do some riding as well as swimming.

Racing season is upon us

I did the cycle PEI TT this past weekend and was pleased with my result. My time was a little over two minutes faster than last year. Part of that might have been better wind conditions; part might have been my new bike and new training regime. I am feeling pretty good about my running. I have been doing speed drills and feel that my running is certainly as fast as its ever been. My goal is to see if I can achieve a PB in 5 and 10 k distances this summer. I may do a 10 k in a couple of weeks and compare my time to last year. It is about 3 weeks to Mooseman triathlon. It always seems that that triathlon comes early and it is a difficult race at the best of times. I don't have any particular goal in mind with that race other than doing better than last year. That shouldn't be too hard as it poured rain last year and that had an effect on my bike ride, both physically and mentally.

I am still really enjoying my training with coach, Torsten Abel. I think it is really helping me and making my training more focused. It should translate into better results but even if it doesn', i am still enjoying the training process. This past sunday, i ran for a hour doing some speed intervals; i then biked for two hours; today i swam 4350 metres at a moderate pace ( i couldn't really swim that distance at anything faster). tomorrow is another speed/run workout and a recovery run.

Big swimming week

Last week I swam over 15,000 metres which is the most i have ever swam in one week. I generally enjoyed it and felt pretty good. I have been doing longer distances- usually more than 3000m per swim. One swim last week was 4200 m which, again, may have been the longest swim I have ever done. I did a good tempo run workout last wednesday. doing one minute fast, one minute easy -fifteen times in a row. On Saturday, I did another one that was about an hour and twenty minutes long and two segments of running hard for 12 minutes each. I feel like my running and swimming have improved since I started being coached in February. I am not sure about my biking as I haven't been outside a whole lot yet. I did a couple of workouts on the trainor last week and then did 90 k on Sunday. it was good for the first two hours and then I died for the last hour and a half. Still, 90 k is an ambitious bike ride for April 10th on PEI. I am going to Cuba this Friday and taking my bike which I am looking forward to. I have never taken a bike on a cuba vacation before but I always see lots of people biking down there.