Rocky Road

This is the first time I have ever been out of shape, in the sense that I am not physically where I am mentally. Mentally I think I should be able to lead the two groups that I run with (when there aren't Kenyans or Pros), but physically it is a different story.

I finally understand why professional athletes don't come back from injury by re-joining their teammates right away. In most pro sports, the guy will workout by himself for a few weeks before joining the group. This is mentally really important I think. I wanted to re-join both the Lifesport and PIH groups right when I got back from AUS. I underestimated how out of shape I was (after all, I felt pretty good running in AUS), and it has been mentally hard for me.

I'm not trying to say that I have it hard or anything, but it is mentally tough to not be able to finish a hard workout because of nausea, or feel good for 1km and then exponentially fall apart after that. The last PIH workout saw me feel great for 4/12 450m reps, before imploding with nausea and dragging some serious ass. I felt like I was some loser that went out way to hard beyond his abiliy.

Mentally, it's pretty discouraging to see all of your peers ahead of you, when you have stumbled a bit. This discouragement has made me less "excited" to head out and workout in general. After all, most athletes like to go and workout because they are good at it, and it's fun to do something your good at.

This is why other pro athletes don't join their teams after injuries. They take really small steps and enjoy the progress.

The problem is, I am on the fence of whether I should take the slow route, or just suck it up and get the crap kicked out of me for a month or so and get in shape faster.

That being said, I had a fun bike ride today in the frozen world we call Canada. One of these days I'll get in the pool, but I will definitely be swimming by myself for a bit!

Getting my sh*t together

Well I have been home for two weeks already! I am finally getting used to the ridiculous weather that we have here on the west coast. I think it was amazing timing that I came home and had 12 days straight of rain.

I can't believe how much you get used to the sun when you are out of this climate. I never realized how depressing it is here when you don't even know the sun exists for a week.

Training wise, I am building in to it slowly. I am starting at a basic running 2 days a week, although it could be less due to a sore groin and more to do with the rain. My bike is getting put together one piece at a time. I am picking up my trainer today so I hope to hop on some indoor workouts soon. Swimming is not happening. I might jump in on a few Lifesport swims, but I can't even justify paying for swimming when I am currently unemployed.

Regarding jobs, I have applied at a LOT of jobs lately. It's pretty strange applying for real jobs. Just the fact that you "pound the pavement" electronically these days is pretty strange. The stupidest thing is that you put so much work into a resume and cover letter, and then after you upload these, the company takes you to a separate web page and basically makes you fill in forms that ask all of the same questions. It's pretty clear that they just use the questionnaire answers to find candidates.

Anyhow I am still taking it easy triathlon wise. I really do plan to have a great year next year. I just think that having a solid background like a good job and nice weekly routine are key ingredients for a good training program. I have neither right now, so I have to be patient.

Good luck at the Seattle Marathon this weekend peeps!
Mj

My New Favourite Run

Well folks I have not run that much in the last two months. I haven't swam too much either. My first ride in two months was today, when I rode a rented bike for 1.5 km to the beach. It was actually pretty scary. The front wheel didn't even look like it was connected to the bike. I would guess the bike age at at least 15 years old.

But one thing has changed.... I can't stop thinking about triathlon. I miss it. I miss the training with the Lifesport group. I miss running with the PIH. I miss the pain.

Anywase, I had the best two runs of my life in Noosa. I have been to Noosa before and ran in the national park, but I took a different trail this time that went along the ocean. It was amazing!!! Although challenging, it took you along the ocean from sea level to jagged cliffs every 400m. On the first day, I was running at full speed when I saw something on the trail in front of me. It didn't look like a dog, and the closer I got I realized that it was a Koala on the trail. It was so amazing. For all the people that have been to Aus, you know how hard it is to spot a koala in the wild. I have only seen one before this. Anyhow, I followed him along the trail for at least 200m. He was in no hurrey, stopping every 5m and taking a look around. At one point I was only 6 inches from him. Finally he found the tree he was looking for and we parted ways. Amazing!!!!

Anywase I have so many plans for the upcoming season. Core needs work for sure! Also endurance. I realize that the strongest I was at biking was coming off the trainer sessions with Lifesport at the pool. I need to start that again!

Before I go I want to say good luck to Sam at Clearwater!
Ciao for now!

Reflections

I've had a lot of time to think about my tri season this year, that had as many firsts and pbs as dissapointments. After the worlds I kind of just put off thinking about the season. However, I have had ample time to look back on the season that was, and see what I did well and didn't.

First off, my training was waaay better this year. A lot more intense, and my training partners were incredible (ironman and olympic champs).

However I think I went against one of the main principles in endurance sport training, the cycle.

At the beginning of the year before I joined Lifesport, I was doing tons of low intensity mileage. Half Marathons, long bike rides, and longer swims. Even at the beginning of my Lifesport training, we were in base mode. After that the training started to get more into build mode, where we did good trainer sessions in hard gears and spin ups. Finally, we started to get into racing mode, with great elk lake runs and time trials on the bike.

At this stage, I was on top of the world. I was crushing my last year's times. 6 minutes faster on a sprint was pretty good! Mentally, I was obsessed with the goals I put forward this year. It was a good time. I had 4 really good races, winning my age group and coming in the top 3 OA in all the races. That's when I lost site of the bigger cycle.

This was still early in the season. May and June were a long way to go from September. My coach even warned me not to go too hard in April, because the guy that is still impoving in May is dangerous in August.

The rest of the season there was no base training. All intense training, that brought me to the best shape of my life. The only problem was I completely lost my endurance. I didn't think it was that big of a deal for Olympic distance racing, but it was. I could compete in the pool on 100s and 200s, but would get killed in open water swimming or 500s in the pool. Running was fine, since I had the biggest base to go off of from winter, but biking was the same. In fact, the second best 1500m time of the year was in May, after Nationals.

All summer I didn't do the long endurance stuff that makes you able to compete for longer. I didn't do a bike ride longer than 2.5 hrs, and didn't do swimming intervals longer than 600m at a time. All of this caught up to me at the end of the season, where I would feel ok at the beginning of the swim, bike, and run, but die out later.

It's amazing how much you learn every year in this sport. Here I thought that my training couldn't get any better, but I was neglecting one of the most important rules of triathlon, building the year around two cycles.

I tried to make it one cycle, and paid the consequences. At least I had a good performance at Nationals, due to my first real taper of the year. I am pretty happy that I had a good performance there, since Worlds as we know was a pretty crazy triathlon.

Next year I have to be not as greedy. I cannot try and be in tip top shape for every triathlon I compete in, which is hard, because I am so competitive. I have to be patient at the behginning of the year, which I never am. So much to look forward to next year!!!!!

The pics from castle hill

These are the pics from Castle hill, that I took with Jasmine when we drove up it before. Pretty cool rock.

OMG a day of training!!!

Today was a great day. For starters, we are now in Townsville, which isn't that special but it is where you catch the ferry to Magnetic Island, which is apparently amazing. We do that in 2 days.

A little bit of backround on today. Yesterday a South African dude at our hostel offered to drive us up to a lookout just out of town and we readily accepted, knowing these opportunities don't come often.

Castle hill is about 2.5 km out of the city centre, but it looks like it belongs in the outback. It is 300m tall, and the road is about 2.9km. What makes it cool is that it is steep and look likes a desert wasteland. As we were driving up there were tons of people apparently running to the top, even thought it looked pretty tough. I knew at once that I was going to tackle this mountain.

So this morning I headed to the pool, which I have also been wanting to do, and put the run off until dusk, when it is only around 27 degrees out.

I headed to the beautiful Tobruk memorial pool, which is steeped in history. It is where the Aus Olympic team trained until 1965 when they invented heated pools. There were over 40 world records broken there, and it was neat to do a laidback 2km straight set in the morning sun.

At dusk, I prepared to do the Castle hill. OMG!

I don't even know where to start on this climb. I know the grouse grind has a hell of a lot of more elevation gain in the same distance, but it was 27 degrees and the sun was still strong enough to kick my ass.

First 3rd.
I felt pretty good. The lungs haven't been used much in a while, but I was ok. I noticed I was the only one running up. Lots of walkers, but no runners.

Second 3rd.
Wow I am dying. There were SOME little flat sections on the first part, but it is now incredible uphill, and I am going pretty slow with a 190+ hr.

Third 3rd
OMG I am going to puke. Still noone else running. Lots of people running DOWN. O man I had t opull it together badly on this last section. Only a few more switchbacks. There was two huge ass Parrots squaking at me, sounding like death was near. BUT I MADE IT!

16.5 of the longest minutes of my life. Totaled in with the run there and back it was over 50 minutes to cover 7 km.

The decent was possibly the worst part. I decided to head down an alternative dirt path, that turned out to be all steps, except they were steps that were to long to jump in one jump, and were so deep that I landed on my toes every time. After 1000 of these my feet felt like the arches had been beaten with a 2 x 4. I was so happy to get home. I wasn't ok though ha ha. Jas was worried. When the temp is still like 27, you can't cool down. Two hours after my shower I was still sweating a rediculous amount and felt light headed. But I did it! Take that out of shape body!!!!!!!

Pictures to come, but google Castle hill in Townsville

Update

Not much to say here folks.

Currently I am at Mission Beach, a small one road town 2 hours south of Cairns. It is so hot here day and night, and the only thing to do is either skydive, or lay on the 14km of uninhabited beach. It is an amazing place. It feels like you are on a deserted tropical island. The beaches are perfect and wide, lined with palm trees. Today we noticed a lizard chillin about 5m away from us. He was about 1.5m in length and about 30 cm wide. Pretty wild.


Training is great!!!! I run like once every three days and swim in the ocean recreationally! I tried running barefoot in the sand and I am really sore! It's a great feeling. I can feel every muscle in my foot working when I run barefoot, like we are supposed to have before big ass shoes came in the market. My achillies tendon is a little sore as well, but I have heard that this is pretty normal when you aren't used to it.

If Nick reads this good luck at RVM!

Quick Update

It feels like a million year since my last post on the race. Post race I took a week completely off, and just enjoyed Australia. I have travelled up the Gold Coast, to Sydney, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, and now Cairns. It has been a lot of travelling but I have enjoyed it a lot. I have still yet to find a swimming pool in my travels, which I am not really worried about. I did my first run in a week in Noosa National Park, which is home to tons of Koalas, Roos and Snakes/Spiders. Needless to say I did a half run, half spotting wildlife!

After that 50 minute run of almost complete hills I was wiped out! It is around 35 degrees on the Sunshine Coast in midday, and very humid. Right now in Cairns (really north for all that don't know), it is 30 degrees in the shade, and the humidity is almost unbarable. My eating and drinking have definitly taken a turn for the unhealthy, but I am not too worried.

We headed to Cairns yesterday but were stuck in Brisbane because of the worst dust storm in 75 years! It was intense, like the end of the world. 12,000 tons of top soil was blown from the outback at 100+km/hr towards the coast. Every flight from Sydney was diverted to Brisbane, and then Brisbane got hit with it so it was slow going!

Now that we have reached Cairns, we plan to slow down and possibly find an apartment and settle in. That means finding the local pool and running along the beautiful water front.

Cairns is where you to go hit the Great Barrier Reef, which we hope to do in a few days. Right now we are enjoying the beautiful weather, along with the cheap hostels that have dinner and beer included in their rates. Most hostels offer a bed for 15 bucks including a meal!

World Triathlon Championships - Race Report

First of all I would like to thank everyone for all of the great support and comments (here and on FB). I wanna start by saying I had an AMAZING day. For those who already saw my result, it wasn't a fast day, but I had an awesome experience.

I'll start this race report with a quick recap of the last few weeks. I have basically been in a taper since nationals. I had an amazing race there and was hoping to keep the momentum going here in Australia. That being said, I told my coach that success in Nationals was important to me, since that is a race that I have done before, and it doesn't involve 8000 people and a 16hr time change. I figured that once I got here, anything could happen and I shouldn't worry about it too much.

This whole week has been crazy. I have been laying low like I should, but I knew something was amiss when I would do a 20 minute run or ride and be really sore after. In fact, during a run where I was supposed to do 10 minutes steady effort, I found it almost unbearable to hold a pace that wouldn't even make me sweat at home. Swimming was similar, in that I was struggling to hold 1:30 for 6 hundreds. 6! Never mind the 20 that we do at home at 1:27. Any who, you know where this post is going ha ha ha.

Race day

I get up really early. No point in trying to sleep any more. I got on the bus at 5:19, just as most of the party goers were going home from the bar. Pretty scary ha ha. Got to the site nice and early and set up transition. Followed my successful pre-race plan exactly (even the shot of espresso 1 hr before). I caught up with Richard and we walked the 1.5km to the swim start, as it was a point to point swim. The swim ended up being wetsuit legal. The water temperature would swing a couple of degrees each way every day. Today it was 20.0, two days before it was 22.0. This whole course was fast. If you were on your game today, you would smash your PB. The water was incredible buoyant. With a wetsuit and the salt water, I could literally just lay in the water and float. We were also apparently swimming with the current, but that was negligible.

In the moment before the start, I have never been so nervous. I wanted to do well for everyone supporting me here and back home.

The gun went off, and we all jumped in the water to kick and pull each other for a few hundred meters. Unfortunately, there weren't many guys that were 22-24 minute swimmers like I was, so I found myself alone pretty quick. It was a lonely swim. The other waves started 7 minutes apart, so there wasn't anybody else out there to draft. I just concentrated on swimming as hard as I could, even following the Bree Wee strategy of going hard for 20 strokes at a time ha.

I got out of the water in what must have been close to last in my heat. 25 minutes or something. I wasn't like at the Sri when I felt I had a good swim and was shocked by my time. I was pretty sure it was going to be like that. My arms were like lead. O well, off to the bike to potentially make up some time.

I must make a quick note about transition. It was HUGE! Imagine Kelowna Apple transition times three. Upon exiting the water, it was a 25m run straight up a thick sand dune (so painful!) and then a 50m run to the right of transition, a 50m run back to the left side, and a 100m run with your bike to the road. Pretty vicious. I managed to get out on the course without too many problems, but I knew my time was pretty slow.

The bike was not as well as planned either. It wasn't horrible, but I now know the feeling of my legs when they are on. You know the feeling when you are going up a small hill and you just accelerate into it, feeling so strong? Yeah that wasn't here today. In nationals, it was. Can you say DRAFTING? OMG. I was warned there was some drafting, but it was a bit ridiculous. We are talking close packs of 15-20 riders blowing by you. Not "pretty close" to each other. We are talking tucked into the person in front of them. There were 10 officials on the course, and to their credit they did pull a lot of people over for penalties.

When someone passed me and just sat in front of me, I didn't worry about it too much. The officials had more blatant offences to take care of. But I never really latched on to any packs. Not trying to preach the gospel here, because I had good friends that rode in packs. I don't blame them in the least. It was part of the day. You did what you could. If I was in contention I wouldn't be too happy seeing a group of M20-24 guys blast by me in a pack either.

There was lots of crashes. A bit of sweet justice to a pack of drafters that passed me and then ate the pavement. It was also getting hot. I started to have stomach issues on the bike. Uh-oh. I have never had issues on the bike before. I can usually eat a steak dinner on the bike and be fine. Not today. Still you couldn't help but enjoy the beautiful course that went along the ocean for 10k and looped back. The temperature was now around 25 degrees out and hot. The sun was direct.

I got off the bike and headed out for the run, still hoping to post a great time. As soon as I got out on the course, I got a really bad stomach cramp. I could barely move. I contemplated stopping for a second to double over and regroup, but screw that! The run course was lined 2 deep with people cheering "go Canada" and "go Janes" . It was an amazing moment. I had so much fun. Around 3km I decided to not worry about my time at all and enjoy the fact that I am doing a triathlon on the other side of the world! Let's just say that it was an experience I will always remember. I was hitting high fives and enjoying every minute of it. People were dropping like flies, with ambulances all around.

It sounds corny, but the entire run I contemplated my season and the successes I have had. All of the amazing workouts with amazing people, the highs and lows, the 4 top three OA results, and Nationals where I shaved almost 9 minutes off last year's time.

I finished running through the finish line in the obligatory sprint, beaming ear to ear. Jasmine could tell on the run that it wasn't my day. She saw how tired I was. Still, she was there for me right at the finish line with my mom and Lisa to congratulate me.

Looking at what happened, I don't really know or care. Maybe it was too much to ask to taper for nationals and then keep it going for worlds. Maybe I peaked a little too early in the year. All I know is that I am at peace with my result, am happy for my teammates and their amazing results, and am ready for a break from working out.

You know we went out hard last night. Although I had been up since 4am, we hit the Bundaberg rum, as well as some other Aussie beer and hit the town. It's 7:30 am the next day ( a sleep in for me), and I just had my first coffee of the day and am ready to go to the beach. More partying tonight and then time to travel this amazing country.


I know this is a long post, but I want to say some thank-you's

To my coach Dan. Thank you so much for all of the support and great advice over the year. There is no way I would have seen this improvement without you. I look forward to getting back to it in January.

To all of the other Lifesport peeps, thanks for the amazing year of training. I still think of Cooper telling me to go "faster by smoother" when I race.

To my friends and family. You have put up with a lot this year, and have supported me every step of the way. Thanks doesn't even cut it.

To Jasmine. I can't even start this without a little tear ha. Wouldn't be here without you. A boyfriend that works out for 3 hours a day isn't much fun. Can't wait for the next 3 months!


I will post pictures as the come.

Thanks for reading,

Mj

Getting close....

We are getting down to the wire folks! Training has been going well. I was reminded by my coach to try not to get sucked into doing too much. He tells me it's exactly what people do in Hawaii as well before the IM.

Yesterday was a little much. Since our hotel is located about 6km from the race site it is just easier to bike there and back than take a bus. Yesterday we had a swim at 8 am at the pool (see pics below). Swimming at 8 am here is a lot different than back home. The sun has been up for three hours already, and the temp is around 24 degrees. It is impossible to sleep past 7. It is kinda strange that the sun rises so early, but sets around 6pm. The swim felt good in our 35m pool (yeah, it was the dive pool). After that Sam, Ruichard and I biked the course to see it. Not much to see ha ha. It is flat as a pancake and right along the ocean. The only thing that could be an issue is the wind. Sans wind I can easily hit 40km/hr, but with the headwind I am going 33km/hr with a good effort.

After that hour long bike, I biked home, got my passport, and biked back to the site to register. After another hour in the sun and biking back to the hotel, I was pooped! I am definitly taking it easy the next two days.

Today I had a beautiful 45 minute run with a 10 minute hard tempo along the beach. I jumped in the ocean after (which is 20 degrees) to cool off. I just got thrashed by the surf ha ha.

Today is also the team meal, parade of nations, and opening ceremony. Should be fun!

Here are some pics of Surfer's and surrounding areas, as well as the pool area

Most Eastern point in Aus

Pool at the Race Site (Salt Water)

View from our hotel room