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!!!!!