2 weeks at once!

5/16 - 5/22

S - 0 yards
B - 49 miles
R - 3.8 miles
Time - 3 hours!!! nice

Not a whole lot going on this week as I felt like absolute crap post-crash throughout the week.  One or two trainer rides and one treadmill run was all I managed to get in during this week of training.  Can't say much other than I felt really fat and slow.

5/23 - 5/29

S - 1000 yards
B - 135 miles
R - 36.8 miles
Time - 11.49 hours

This week was about a lot of travel and meeting new people and making new friends.  I got back to more normal bike (trainer) and run (treadmill) workouts this week but the volume was still quite low until the weekend.  On Wednesday I drove to Lexington, VA to see my brother graduate from Washington and Lee University.  While it made me nostalgic for college, it also made me appreciate how much (and in some ways, how little!!) I've changed since graduating.

After leaving Lexington on Friday morning I headed to Chapel Hill, NC as I was invited to the Fast Forward Triathlon team camp.  My day started with meeting one of the best collegiate triathletes in the country (and the best 18-24 year old in the world), Alex McDonald and Eric Bean before saddling up for a Computrainer LT sub max and max test and Inside Out Sports in Cary, NC.  Besides being a good workout, LT tests (done correctly) are extremely informative.  They're also pretty tough.  This particular one started out easy and then power ramped up every 3 minutes and a blood sample was taken to determine at what power level my body can no longer maintain the buffering of lactate and it begins to build.  After that goodness was over, there was 8 minutes of recovery then a "max" test.  That involved starting at a wattage just below threshold and increasing that by 20 watts every minute until failure.  That was tough.  My PT has my max wattage during that amazing session at ~470 watts, but the Computrainer readout didn't work quite the same so I'm gonna go with whatever number makes me look better.  I then got to watch Moose (Kathrine Warren) do her test, which was more fun then doing one yourself!  Later in the day Kristin Andrews arrived and did her test, which was pretty astonishing to watch.  Her LT was higher than most male triathletes; it'll be interesting to see how hard she hammers the comp in her upcoming races!  It may or may not have been higher than mine... :( haha

The rest of the day was doing some other stuff (I basically served as FFT Team Assistant for the weekend, along with Kristin's boyfriend Chris) before meeting up at Alex's house for dinner where Brian Duffy and Morgan Anderson met up and thusly the entire weekend crew was there.  After some general pow-wowing everyone went to their respective places to stay and met up the next morning for Brian and Morgan's LT test, which was fun (for me) and then we departed for the P (performance) Ride in Chapel Hill.  It was a group of ~25+ that was whittled down to 10-12 by the end of the 55 miles.  I felt just ok and since it was my first outdoor ride since the crash my hand was still quite achy and didn't work the brakes or pull on the bars particularly well.  Eric and Brian were laying the hammer down throughout the ride; I'm not sure what the roadies thought of the tri-geeks...

We finished the ride and went back to IOS where I went for a nice, easy, incredibly hot 40 minute run with Moose.  After some eating the team sat down and Eric and Alex basically laid out expectations and "guidelines" for the team members.  It was fun to see the "behind the scenes" of a team that will be popping out some pretty awesome triathletes in the coming years.  'Nuff said.

Sunday started with a long-ish run (1:10) that didn't cover a ton of distance but it was on some nice springy trail surface so it was good to get outside and log some time but not stress the legs too much.  My running has been sadly inconsistent for the past 2 weeks so I didn't want to over-do it by running too fast/too far with the rest of the crew so I trotted along with Moose.  She told me that she used to win Halo tournaments for money, which was a big mistake on her part.  Easily the highlight of the run, despite the fact that I thought it was funny/awesome I made sure to give her a lot of crap for it.  Deserved.

Sunday afternoon was a swim session that included some video and Alex (Dr) and Eric (Dr) both agreed that since my stitches had been in for 2 weeks I could get in the pool without fear of infection.  Hoping they were right I got in and farted around for a little bit but kept it easy and short.  I was just happy to get back in the water.  I love swimming THIS much!!  (a lot)  There was a BBQ at Eric's house for dinner that night so it was fun to meet some other local athletes and entertainers and eat some good food.  My level of fatigue was fairly high at this point so I was happy to be asleep by 9:30 that night...

Monday morning was a photo shoot session with the team in their race kits on their bikes as Chris and I drove around and played pro photographers for a little while before some of us headed out for a 2 hour ride.  The weather was warm and my legs felt medium well so luckily there were no crazy efforts in the ride.  Moose and I (feel like I'm saying this a lot over the weekend...) went for a short run with some strides after the ride and then headed to the pool where I managed to not embarrass myself too badly (like everyone else on the team it seems, flipper-ish swimmer) and my hand felt a little better than the day before.  I didn't feel rusty, but I couldn't hold a quick pace for nearly as long as I'd like to be able to.  Although I am positive now that barring some weird complication, I'll be able to duke it out at Tri Latta in 2 weeks.

The rest of the day Monday (yes I'm creeping into next week's blog, alas!) was spent eating/sitting/talking and in the early morning hours of Tuesday (4:30am, ugh) I drove Moose to the airport for her return trip to UCSB and then made my way back down to CLT.  Yay, a solid week and now I get to really start training again.  I've felt so inconsistent over the past 5 weeks (racing + crashing) that I'm just happy to get back to a regular schedule.