A little recovery and a little sprinting

S: 11450
B: 161
R: 14

T: 14

I surprised myself a little bit this week when I actually started to get excited about getting in the pool.  It's been awhile since I've had that feeling so it's nice to get it when I have my first two big races of the year in the next 3-4 weeks and since I've had the feeling before (and went overboard taking advantage of it...) I know what NOT to do.  What I WILL do is do mostly base/easy swims with 1 or 2 real workouts per week.

I would have biked more this week but the weather and the fact that I was recovering from the marathon slowed that down a little bit.  I did have a very good ride on Saturday of 3.5 hours where I got in a lot of work on the front on a very windy day.  I also forgot water bottles so my entire fluid system was 20oz of mountain dew at mile 50!  It's nice to know that I can rock the Dew whenever I want to.  I also had the 20k effort in the race on Sunday that was definitely affected by the ride the day before.  Regardless, I wouldn't have changed that because I can't "waste" a training weekend with NOLA 70.3 only 3 weeks away by just getting in a short ride.

Running was obviously limited this week; my first run after the marathon was on Friday and it definitely didn't feel great - I could tell my quads were still a little sore - but after that I felt MUCH better on Saturday and in the run portion of the race on Sunday.  Next week I'm going to throw in some workouts and get back up to my normal volume and see where it takes me.

Race Report: Cool Breeze Sprint Tri (250 yd pool swim, 12.4 mile bike, 3.1 mile run)

Swim: 3:21 (14th)
It was a little weird swimming with the tri top; I could definitely tell it slowed me down but I didn't want to wear a speedsuit for a 250 yard swim as I didn't think the time gained during the swim would negate having to take the time to remove it in transition (turns out I was wrong...).  Swim was pretty unremarkable.  I was out of the water in 3:10ish so my actual swimming pace was closer to 1:16/100 yds than 1:21.

T1: 1:05
This transition killed me.  Literally.  To find a slower T1 time than mine you have to go down to 13th place overall.  The average T1 time of the top 10 was around 40 seconds.  I had trouble getting my shoes on, getting my helmet on and zipping up my short sleeve jersey (it was really cold and windy).  This plus my T2 probably kept me from winning or at least being close to the win.  Oh well.

Bike: 31:31 (1st)
I didn't feel particularly good on this bike ride; my legs weren't all that fresh but I had no reason to be annoyed by that because I brought it on myself with the ride the day before.  I had Donny in my sights almost the whole ride but I could never bridge the gap between us.  I felt like I had zero power on all the hills so I was really pleasantly surprised to see that I had the fastest bike split.  Not by much (3 seconds) but every second counts in a race this short.

T2: 0:54
Had trouble getting my running shoes on this time.  Didn't lose quite as much time on this one but was still around 10 seconds behind the average of the top 5.

Run: 17:27 (2nd)
I felt pretty good right at the start; the first mile is a gradual uphill to mile 1, which I hit in roughly 5:40, followed by a flat section with a slight downhill then climb before the turnaround and mile 2.  I went through that mile in just over 5:40 so I managed to hold my pace pretty well.  The last mile was all downhill.  I could see Donny and Mason the whole time but like on the bike I just couldn't quite close the gap.  I definitely felt like I could have held this pace for a good while longer but I couldn't go any faster.  That being said, I was very pleased with this run time and it seemed that it was the correct distance (unlike last year, but that was a totally different course).

Total time:  54:17

just for fun without transitions the top 5 places were:

1) 52:19, 2) 52:43, 3) 52:45, 4) 52:18-me, 5) 54:24

so I was technically the fastest 'on the course' but that literally matters nada).  Oh well.

It was a fun day out there with Donny and Carrie and a good day for Triple Threat as well.

The next two weeks will be pretty big (12000, 200, 50) so hopefully I survive those and get stronger for New Orleans, which is 3 weeks from today!!