Monday, April 11, 2011

One week to go...

S - 19,200 yards
B - 253.8 miles
R - 52.1 miles

Time - 24.01 hrs

Swim sets were long and rather boring this week, I can't lie.  The swim workouts changed a bit in the past two weeks to longer, steadier intervals as opposed to the high-intensity intervals I had been doing.  I'm no expert, but  I believe the intention was more specific prep work for NOLA next Sunday.  As usual, I only swam 4 times this week so 19k+ yards is quite a good average swim distance for each workout.  3 of 5000+ this week.  Hooray swimming!

The best part about biking this week was the fact that most of it was on my new P3.  Having ridden a rickety old road bike for the past 3 months switching to a high-end tri bike was like a new epiphany.  It is the cat's meow, you might say.  It is close to being worth as much as my car (thankfully, vehicular depreciation hasn't gotten that far yet for the ol' Mazda).  Needless to say, I'm kind of into it.  Considering that in the past 12 or 13 weeks I've spent an average of 10+ hours/week on my bike I definitely spend more time with it than with any other person.  Don't you judge me!

Highest mileage totals so far this year on the run, which is nice.  I feel as though I knocked my two run workouts [relatively] out of the park this week, so that's nice.  The long run included some pretty serious quality, fast running in the middle of it so I feel pretty well prepared for New Orleans next Sunday.

So that begins the end, in which I talk about New Orleans 70.3 that is next Sunday.  A lot of people (myself included) are probably expecting me to go fairly quick since I've been training so much but the problem is that it takes a LONG time to get really fast.  There is no shortcut.  I'm certainly better across all three sports than I was last year.  There is no doubt about that.  Unfortunately, it's only been 3 months of solid training.  I've been extremely consistent; haven't missed hardly any workouts and have been doing (almost) everything right (let's not talk about my diet, just yet).  So, what happens Sunday will happen no matter what.  I'd certainly like to win my AG, but I know there's at least one very fast 25-29er that will be there on race day.  I'd love to PR, which would give me some positive reinforcements.  Most of all, I just want to run fast.  As opposed to people saying "damn" when I pass them on the bike, I'd like them to be impressed with how fast I'm running!

Dare to dream!

3 comments:

mainers said...

good luck in the big race James! I see you have snuck on to the Athleticore leaderboard for CRC which is no mean achievement for a triathlete!

James Haycraft said...

Thanks Paul! I won't be there for long, unfortunately.

The Essential Well said...

Hey James, I hope you kill it this weekend. Your hard work is inspiring and I'm sure you'll do great. Another guy to look out for is James McCurdy. I sat beside him on our long plane ride to Australia a couple of years ago with Team USA and the guy is tough (At least at Olympic distance).