Mj's Tri Blog

It's Been a While!

2010-03-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

Wow it has got to be at least a month since my last post.

Here is an update on what is going on with my training/life right now. My new job is fantastic! I work with great people and being a "banker" is a pretty entertaining profession right now. I just nailed a presentation on the economic forecasts of the main economies HSBC invests in, and I love the people I work with.

On the training front, it has been an enjoyable challenge to adapt to my new "adult" lifestyle. Seriously, I have a new respect for the average 30-49 y/o (I don't include those over 50 cause I think they have a little more flexibility in their work schedule) triathletes. Last year I had 6 classes while writing a thesis and training & working full time, but I was still able to get away from class for an hour or two to join a group at the pool or track.

Now that I am part of a large corporation, there is no wiggle room at all during the day. I get an hour lunch, but with no showers available at work it would just be a waste of time to try and get anything remotely productive done. And when I get home from work I am friggin exhausted. I don't want to sound like I never knew that before, because I did.

The biggest difference from last year when I was training and working full time was this. When I was working as a bartender with later hours, I was able to give all of myself to my daily training, and drag my tired and sore body to work and slug it out. Now it's the opposite. I give the best and strongest part of my day to work, and slog out a workout after.

That being said, I have been enjoying my training lately. I am hitting both the PIH Tuesday night workout as well as the Lifesport Saturday workout, in order to get two solid interval sessions per week. I am also doing some unstructured runs a few days a week as well.

I am going to the pool at least two days a week and am really enjoying it. Sure it's pretty hard to get motivated to go, but I am having fun doing 2km sets with a little hard interval sesh in the middle. I still do all my drills and pickups, and try to get 500-750m of intervals before some kicks and pulls. I feel that 500-750m is perfect for me right now. It really gets the heart up, and allows me to hit some pretty solid lap times. I know I would not be able to keep that pace for any longer, but it allows me to feel good about myself, which makes me keep wanting to come back!

I have even been getting out on the bike! The last few times out I have been challenged by riders that I just run into, which has made for some pretty fun riding!

All in all, I am working out right now because I love working out! I am trying to get back into shape, but not putting so much pressure on myself. Last year I knew that I would probably only have one year to try and excel seriously as a triathlete before my career began, and I felt pressured to excel as fast as I could. Now I am relaxing more and enjoying the improvements when they come.

Wow that was a long post. Hopefully that is enough for a few weeks.

Happy training!

Mj

Bitchin

2010-01-31T13:30:00.000-08:00

Well there were a few small setbacks this week.

First, I got home Thursday night after work and noticed that my right shin was completely numb. I started to freak out a bit, and promptly got on Google to see what it could be. Turns out a pinched nerve in my lower back is the most likely culprit.

It also said that it can happen from doing things like sit ups and pull ups. Well on Tuesday I was doing a different set of sit-ups that usual (which I will obviously never do again ha), so I think that is what happened.

Anyway, in classic obsessed triathlete fashion, I wanted to make sure that my leg was ok and there was still circulation going to it. So I ran 13km around Victoria, and then headed to the pool for a couple kms. The leg was fine, other than not being able to feel it. I reasoned that if there was a lack of circulation, it would give out under the workload of running. But I actually ran pretty good, so maybe no feeling in your legs is a good thing for performance!

The next morning the numbness had subsided somewhat, but as soon as I started walking around it was back. Friday at work was not good for it. It was number than ever and I was pretty worried.

I took Friday off working out just to be safe and give my back a rest. After a light swim on Sat, today it feels much better!

Not to bitch too much here, but Commonwealth pool has been getting on my nerves quite a bit lately. It's a great place to train when your on a team, but for drop in laps it is ridiculous! I hate how they come out with a weekly schedule saying that certain pools are open for length swimming all day, and then when you get there, they have a freaking swim meet on! You know they have planned those meets months in advance, but they are rarely on the shedule.

I got there today to find that there was not ONE lane available for public swimming, even though the sched said there was an entire pool available. I ended up switching pools twice, in both cases just making a lane for myself without any lane ropes. I even had to battle a 40 yo lady for space, as she was just floating on her back all over the pool. A little spray to the face on my flipturn did the trick (I'm really not that much of an ass, I swear). I'm just annoyed that they can't get that stupid sched right, so that I don't waste 50 mins of my life driving out there and back.

On a lighter note, the pounds that I put on while traveling are coming off, so I feel a little more like an athlete. I am definitely on a running focus these days, so I can get back in the VIRS ASAP (acronyms anyone?), as well as get ready to be on the HSBC TC 10k team!

Happy training!!

MJ

Update

2010-01-27T22:26:00.000-08:00

I finally got internet again at my house! Woo!

I have been using my iPhone to update for the last while, so naturally there has been no motivation to update the ol' blog.

Things are definitely getting better on the workout front. I am not making leaps and bounds, since my new job is pretty consuming, but I am getting there slowly.
I am running about 3-4 times a week, swimming 2 times a week, and biking 1 or 2 times.

The swimming has been hard. I enjoy it enough when I am there, but driving out to Commonwealth has been an issue lately after work. It is just soooo much easier to go for a run or even go lift weights at the rec centre 3 minutes from my place.

Speaking of weights, I am really enjoying my core work lately. It is entertaining how sore I am after ha!

I did my first TNW in a while (thanks to work letting me go early), and I saw some huge gains. I was a little disappointed in the practice however. Without Shane there, there was nobody at the front to hold the pack in check on the recovery sections, to ensure that we actually get our heart rates down. The lead group is an amazing pack of guys, but the competitive spirit diminished the workout a bit too much for me.

I started with the lead guys, but after two intervals of barely slowing below a tempo run on the recovery sections ( we were supposed to do a recovery jog), I decided to run my own workout. It was so funny seeing the lead group on the course. I saw them right before the recovery interval finished before the next hard section, and most of them didn't even change speeds into the fast section! They were just going as fast as they could the whole course.

Meanwhile I was having an amazing workout on my own, even though I would get passed on the recovery sections by 40 y/o ladies (no disrespect ladies) that have 45min 10k times, before I would blow by them on the actual intervals. I think I was one of maybe three people who lowered their times on the last 4 loops. I have to admit though, there have been some amazing PIH improvements. Jogging with the ladies allowed me to see some of the real risers in the group. And don't get me started on Jeff Hunt, who is really seeing his hard work pay off.

I think it could have just been this workout, since most PIH TNWs have walking sections, where everyone is pretty much forced to slow down. I will give it another go next week probably, to see if it's different. Right now though, my Sat morning crew is looking pretty good, where we all work together to push ourselves, and hold back on the recoveries so that we can all start together. Getting the hr down between hard efforts is so crucial for improvement.

I will definitely post more now that I got the net back!

Happy training.

Some consistency

2010-01-04T19:10:00.002-08:00

This past week has seen me get back to some sort of a routine. Since I finally landed a job at a bank a few weeks ago, I have been able to put some priority back into training rather than being unemployed. Of course, the holiday season always is disruptive to training, with old friends and family in town and wanting to get together for drinks and food. Therefore Jan 1st saw the start of my life returning to normal.

Since I received a gym pass for my birthday, I have been able to get in the gym quite a bit lately. It is really nice to be able to work on my core and upper body, which lacked in strength last year. I am now working out at least once a day, and eating well again.

My runs and rides have been going pretty good. I am still a long way from being in shape, but it is coming along. The biggest thing that is holding me back right now is my inability to recover from high heart rates. This was evident in my last run with Nick, where my heart rate could just not recover from the hills at cedar hill. I was still in the 180s on the flats between hills. As I told Nick, it's not so much that I am tired, but one can only run for so long with a 180 HR, whether they are in shape or not. The entire run had an average of 173, only 33 beats higher than Nick!

For obvious reasons, I am not participating in the pioneer 8k this week. I don't want to sound too full of myself, but I just wouldn't be able to deal with such a poor result compared to last year. It sucks, because I LOVE that race, and racing really
helps you get in shape, but I'm just not ready, and mentally no good can come from it. I might volunteer at it though.

Swimming is starting slowly, but I am enjoying doing a lot of paddle work. I did a few sets of 100s and had a chuckle, since I was THAT slow.

That's all for now

Some data

2009-12-14T21:36:00.000-08:00

Well I finally got a new battery for my HR monitor to see how my heart is doing compared to my legs. The data was pretty shocking! I've used it on 2 runs and 1 ride so far, and I've realized how out of shape my heart is compared to my legs. The two runs that I have used it on were with Nick Best (32 min 10k cross country this year). He invites me out for his second run of he day, which is usually just a slow tempo for him. I wad amazed to see that my heart rate never dropped below 175, even on downhills. To have a HR of 175 in the summer would mean a pretty painful interval effort that couldn't be sustained for longer than 5 minutes. On one uphill I even hit the 190s!

The crazy thing is that for such a high HR, I don't feel that bad. I can carry on a conversation with nick ( although it's easier for him) and my legs don't burn at all. I have also noticed that my HR never recovers, which I guess is why I die in the middle of workouts these days. The same thing happens on the bike. I usually have a higher HR when running compared to biking, but now it's the same. Just increasing my cadence to 110 will get my HR up to 160, something I could rarely do this summer if I tried my hardest.

What this basically tells me is that when you decrease your training, your heart is the first to go. I'm sure a lot of people already knew that, but I really thought my legs would be holding my comeback in check, not my heart.
Tonight was a beautiful twilight run with nick in the snow. Something just felt peaceful about tonights run. I've been going through intervews and cuts for jobs lately so it's nice to get out and clear my head.
A dopo,
mj

Rocky Road

2009-12-02T19:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-04T23:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2009-10-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-06T23:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-24T00:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

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....

2009-09-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

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

OK a little more time to post!

2009-09-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Wow the past few days have been incredible! Surfer's Paradise is pretty amazing. Pair that with 30 nations competing in a triathlon and you have heaven!

I went to my first Team Canada practice today at the pool. WOW it was so much fun. The workout was pretty basic (5 x 100, 10 x 50 MS), but the atmosphere was electric. Team Canada, NZ, Mexico, Italia, and Australia were there! The pool was an amazing 50m outdoor pool, that was salt water! Pretty crazy! I couldn't zone out and take in some water in that badboy! Of course I swam my ass off trying to hold my own with the other young guns ha ha!

The course and pool are about 6 km North of our hotel. At first I was a little sad that our hotel was that far from the course, but now I am really happy about it. We are allowed to take our bikes onto the pool deck, so it's not a big deal to bike there. And I would much rather bike six km to practice than bike 6 km to party! Our hotel is right smack in the middle of the main drag. It's like vegas here!

Biking and running have been going great. Swimming was a kick in the ass after not swimming for almost a week due to travelling. It is SO HARD not to do like 5 workouts a day here. Everyone is a triathlete, and group runs and rides are going three times a day. Today is a schduled day off, so I am going to try and stay off my feet, but good luck. I will probably mozy on down to the beach and ride the surf for hours!

This is definity the most amazing experience!

Quick post

2009-09-05T16:13:00.001-07:00

I have 48 seconds left on my internet! Brisbane was amazing! Could definitly live there! Surfurs is even better! Did a run with Paul and Cathy from the elite squad yesterday, and rode with some NZers today!

Cleaning Sucks

2009-09-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

This is the first time in about a week that I have had a minute to spare to write a blog post. All week Jas and I have been moving stuff out of our place and cleaning. We did the final clean yesterday, and are officially ready for Aus tomorrow! So excited! Training has been a mix of easy and fun. The fitness is there. Dan has laid out a nice taper for me, which looks like it centers around feeling nice and fast for the next 10 days.

I am definitly a lot more relaxed these days since Nationals. I feel like I proved all the hard work this year has paid off with my 8 minute PB in Kelowna, so a little of the pressure is off for Worlds. I really want to go 2:10.00 or under in Aus, but I am really there to enjoy the experience!

More posting when I get down under!

Mj

A Few More Classic Pics

2009-08-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

Putting the boxes on the bike for the Greyhound

Amazing job

Rolling down Granville in Van

Taking the bus to the ferry

Kelowna Apple- Part 2

2009-08-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

After the race we headed off to the hotel to shower and change, and then back to the course. I was hoping for a top 5 at this race, but it didn't happen. 6th in my age group. I made the goal of top 5 however, based on last year's results, which I would have made. This year had a strong M20 field.

I relaxed with my buddies in the beer gardens for a bit, and then it was time to head home. My buddy Steve was driving, and the rest of us started to fall into a nice relaxing sleep for the long ride home. About an hour in to the ride, Steve woke me up to tell me something is wrong with the car. I saw that a few warning lights were on, but I wasn't too worried, that is until Steve pointed out that the engine temperature gauge was in the "engine is about to explode" range.

We pulled over in the middle of nowhere and popped the hood. The engine was smoking pretty bad. One of the tubes that connects the radiator to the coolant pump had come off, spewing coolant everywhere. We knew we were going to have to get a tow. Luckily we hitched a ride with a guy heading to Merritt, as a tow truck can only take two guys. The tow into Merritt (26km away) was $200.00! Ouch. Being guys, we assumed that when we got to Merritt we could do a little repair on the blown tube and be off to Vancouver in an hour.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

Us working on the car

Steve providing the music for our troubles

Looking stoked to be in Merritt

The coolant tube was but a small symptom of a much larger problem. We slowly began to figure out that the engine blew something that created a massive oil leak. In a matter of minutes the car was running on NO oil. Like none. This created so much heat that the coolant couldn't take the pressure and blew, creating even more heat. We had to wait until the next day to get the final verdict from the mechanic in Merritt, but we were pretty sure the engine was toast.

Let me tell you, Merritt on a Sunday night is not that fun. Me and the boys made the best of it, getting some Captain Morgans and yucking it up, but we knew tomorrow was going to be a long day. To add to all of this, two of us had no battery for our cell phones, and another had somehow lost his altogether.

I got up early the next day to talk to the mechanic who informed me the car was toast. He was sure that the incredible overheating had melted the inside of the engine, causing it to warp. You could hear the starter motor turning, but there was just no compression in the pistons. AWESOME. This was my mom's car which I decided to take instead of mine so that we wouldn't break down and be stranded. Ironic.

It was hard to leave such a nice car there, but we had to get home. I couldn't stay another night in Merritt, and it would likely take a lot longer than that to figure out what to do with the car. So we ditched it and took a Greyhound bus to Vancouver.

The long walk home

I took apart my bike as best I could and had two bags on my back, my wheels in one hand, and my bike in the other. It was rough. Two minutes before leaving on the bus, the driver informs me that he won't take my bike because it's not in a box. WTF? So we asked for some old boxes out back and just started taping them around my bike. We somehow got like 4 old crappy old boxes over my bike, and just taped two half boxes around my wheels. So butch.

After 5 long hours we made it to Vancouver. Then the hard part began. We had to take public transit from downtown to the ferry. Two bags, wheels, and my bike on the skytrain and bus. OMG. I will post pictures of it I promise. I don't know how my bike made it without any mishaps. After the second bus we had a little time so I put the bike back together and put it on the bike rack outside, which was a little nicer.

We finally get to the ferry and walk on. I bring my bike upstairs because I had no lock for it and hell, I just didn't want to leave it anywhere. Of course the cheif steward has a big problem with this, but my buddies pull the "he is a big triathlete guy that just came back from national championships and his car broke down" story, so the guy lets us keep the bike upstairs.

10.5 hours after leaving Merritt, we are back in Victoria. All of the travelling has basically ruined my legs (little or no stretching plus a greyhound equals pain).

I have to laugh because I was thinking to myself "I never want to travel again," except I am leaving for Australia in like 7 days for 3 months! I'm gonna bike out to the Sidney TT tonight just to loosen up the legs.

This post will have to be in parts!

2009-08-25T11:04:00.001-07:00

Wow I have never had so much stuff happen in a span of 3 days. I don't even know where to start? A road trip with my three best buds, a very important triathlon, and an unplanned sojourn in Merritt are just some of the highlights. OK here it goes.

Me and three of my buds left Vic on Friday afternoon. I was pretty excited that I was going to Nationals with some non-triathlon people. I didn't want to be overly anxious for the race too far in advance. These guys would help me relax until it was time to focus on the entire reason for the trip, the triathlon.

After accidentally missing the turnoff to Hope and hitting the US border, we were one our way to Kelowna! We sang old songs at the top of our lungs the whole way up, and got into our crummy motel around 12:00 am in good spirits. The next morning I got up early (compared to four regular guys ha) and headed down to the race site. The juniors were racing and it was fun to watch. I could feel the nervous tension building up in me. I was excited! The weather was so different from last year. It was still really hot in the day (around 30), but the mornings were strikingly cooler. I also saw wetsuits so I knew that they would most likely be legal the next day as well.

After coming back to the hotel we all went for a wine tour / tasting at Mission Hill Winery. It was amazing!

Us acting stupid at the wine tour!

Us getting our somellier on

I of course only had a few small glasses of wine, and was chugging the water on the hot day. I was the guy on the tour that had to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes!

After the tour we headed out for lunch, and then back to the hotel where I got ready to pack my tri stuff up and drop my bike off at the site. I remember one fatal error last year was being outside around the triathlon site waaaay too long under the hot sun. This year I tried to keep it to a minimum, and was in bed early.

I kicked the boys out to go partying around 9:00 pm and got a nice 5 hour head start on them for sleep!

Race morning was the usualy race morning. I made sure that I had eaten a good brekkie, and had my usualy double espresso (something I forgot last race). I found Sam Mazer in transition and we hung out for the better part of 2 hours, doing a small warmup together. I was pumped. The swim course was two loops, so it looked pretty short. I got a great warmup in and was ready to go when all of the male 20-29s were corralled together for the start. I was so scared! I have never been really scared before a race, but I didn't want to fail twice in a row, and I knew today was going to be painful. Kelowna is a hard course! I knew I would be basically sprinting in at least 25 degree heat for the next two hours! The probabilility of cramping on this course is pretty high for a big guy like me!

The gun went off, and the start was crazy! I mean stupid crazy. There were so many fist flying. Some people were so intent on hurting others that for about 100 meters we were barely moving forward! We actually came to a complete stop at one point. Tactically, it was a slow swim for me. Physically, I was pushing hard and trying to grab some feet. But sometimes it just doesn't happen. There was nobody around me that was going my pace. I swam along for most of the swim. Some guy punched me so hard in the first 100m that my left goggle filled up with water, so I couldn't see anything. I managed to fix it when we came out of the water for the second lap, but it for sure had cost me some time. I came out of the water in 23:48, which I am really happy with considering the conditions.

T1 was painful! I just didn't have the usual jump out of the water. I hopped on the bike and rode off like the wind hoping to make up some time.

I attacked Knox hill aggressively. I could tell my biking was strong today. I rode with a guy for a lap and a half, but he died soon after. I was hitting 45-47 k/hr on the stretch back into Kelowna. I knew I was faster than last year, because I had written on a peice of paper my lap splits from last year, and I was faster. I also knew that it would be very tight to get into T2 around the 1:30.00 mark, which would set me up for a 2:10.00 goal race time. My bike time was 1:05.41, almost two minutes faster than last year (which was the bike of my life). I was out of T2 in 1:31.54, so I knew my goal of 2:10.00 might not happen. Still, I was really happy with my race so far and I wanted to finish strong.

I set a solid pace on the run early. Unfortunatly, there are no km markers on the run course. This automatically makes you slower, because you can't see when you start to slack off how fast you are going and speed up! I saw on one of the turnarounds that I was a minute back of one of my fellow age groupers. I reeled him in around 4km, just in time to pass my cheering squad of three guys yelling like idiots for me! It was awesome!

Me and the guy

When he saw me catch up, he definitely sped up, which was fine for me. I was starting to feel the heat and could definitely use a running partner! He dragged me through the next few kms, and we started talking to eachother, encouraging eachother to keep pushing hard. Around 7 km I started to get tactical with this guy. I was listening to his breathing. It was much more laboured than mine. I could tell he was working harder than me. Still, every time we accelerated, he hung on. At around 9km, there was a water station, and he pulled in behind me to get some gatoraid. That was the moment I decided to go. I went balls out and the guy just couldn't respond. In about 300m I had made a 50m gap. My cheering squad went nuts when they saw this! I finished with a 39:35 run, which I am really happy with for not having km markers. My total time was 2:11.29. which is basically a minute away from my ultimate goal in worlds. I am sooo happy about this race. I was two minutes faster in the swim, 2 minutes faster in the bike, and 4 minutes faster in the run than last year, for a total of 8 minutes faster!

I am really happy because mentally and physically, I executed this race to plan. Without the crazy head bashing start in the swim, and with km markers, I am pretty sure I would have been in the 2:10.00 range.

Most of the story starts after this race, but I just can't bring myself to start it now.

More entry later...

Out of The BLUE!!

2009-08-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

Wow I have to write a quick post on this. Yesterday I took my Team Canada tri suit to Out of the Blue, so that they could repair the CAN that is falling off the front. They told me it would be ready the next day and would probably cost like $10.

I get there today and they give me my suit and when I ask how much the lady says "no charge, good luck at Nationals." Wow, what a company! I said no that I wanted to pay her, but she wouldn't let me, saying "we only fixed the lettering, it wasn't a big deal."

This would never happen on the mainland, or anywhere else for that matter. I was so touched. That is what a local company is all about. If anyone is having problems with their Team Canada tri suit, or would like their name printed on their suit, I would strongly suggest you go to Out of the Blue. I will be a customer for life.

1 week

2009-08-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

Just under 1 week 'till Nationals! I'm getting pretty excited. I took in my Team Canada tri suit to get the CAN fixed on it today. I can't believe the quality of the suit that Tri Can gave us for Worlds! I've worn it two times and most of the lettering has fallen off! Luckily there's a great shop in Vic that does tri-suits for the naitonal and junior teams, so they know what to do!

My week of great workouts ended strong. I had a solid run with the Lifesport group on Saturday morning. We did 10 x 2 minutes hard. We did 5 of them out and 5 back, so you had to be at least back to the same spot you started at or better. I felt a little sloppy on the way out, but turned it on on the way back, negative splitting! I followed that up with a 1 hour easy bike.

Sunday had a 2 hour brick on the sched. I was a little worried that this workout might not go well, since I had a wedding to work on Satuday night and we didn't get home 'till around 1:30am. My legs were a little sluggish on the two TT efforts on the bike, but the 5 km TT run off the bike went great. Nothing like running on a track for a TT! Although somewhat monotonous, you know that the kms are the same length, so you can see exactly when you are losing ground. I threw down an 18:31 5km, with a steadily rising hr from 156 to 188 on the last km. It was interesting to note that my second km was quite a bit better than my first km. I guess it really does take a little bit for the muscles to stretch out and activate after the bike.

Today was the start of my taper week. We had a little shorter main set today in the pool (1800m), but it was hard! Some drills, 4 x 50 sprints, followed up immediately by a 200, 3 times. I held 38 seconds for the 50s, and around 2:55 for the 200s, which I was happy with. My arms were demolished from each set of 50s. I also completed my goal of not letting Magali lap me on the 200, which I barely made each time!

Time for a nap and then the last of my 6 straight days of working yeaaaaah!

It's on

2009-08-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

This week has been a great week of workouts. It's funny...I didn't even feel that great after my recovery week last week. I was sort of thinking to myself "do I need another week or something???". But apparently that is all I needed. After another good long bike on Sunday, I had my best swim practice of my life on Monday. We were going 400s, 200s, and 100s. Throughout the 2400m main set, I held 1:28 on the 400s, 1:26 on the 200s, and sub 1:23 on the 100s. By far the fastest I have ever swam. I even got down to 1:20 on my last 100! Thanks to Janet for pacing with me for the first while, before accelerating away! I couldn't even hide how stoked I was at this pace. It was one of those days were I didn't want to leave the pool.

Tuesday brought another great day of workouts. I had a great run in the morning, where I was building by 1/3rds from recovery to tempo. For some reason I decided to try and run sub 40 minutes at elk lake, even though the first 6km would be at a really low hr. I missed it by about 1 minute, but I was giving it a pretty good effort by the end to try and make it!

After some rest, which involved painting my bathroom, I had the Sidney TT in the evening. There was a big contigent of Lifesport peeps there which is always fun! I was about 10 seconds off my PB (for my third fastest time of the year), which I am pretty happy with for having tired legs from running and painting, as well as the course was really slow today. One of those days where you go around 37km/hr on the way out, and 45 km/hr on the way back, thanks to the winds. I finished off the day with a nice cooldown in the squash courts! Legs were pretty tired when I got home at 9:30 pm!

Wednesday brought another great day of workouts. It started early, with a 7 am jaunt to the Observatory to do 6 hill repeats. It was one of the workouts where I thought to myself "wow I would never have done this last year." The repeats went really smooth, with each ascent feeling better than the last.

After the bike it was off for another workout in the pool. Although it is tough to take away too much from a long set of 50s, I just feel like I have a better attitude in the pool and can stay strong throughout the w/o.

I think that my last race has been a blessing in disguise. I hate being embarassed, and I feel like I am totally dialed in mentally to training right now. I want to kill it in Kelowna. I feel like more of an athlete than ever before. Triathlon is my job right now, while bartending is a distant second! I have a bit of a cold right now, so I'm crossing my fingers that it's just a passing thing.

Ciao

5:07

2009-08-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

Although I had a bad race last week, the feedback from training lately has been constantly reminding me that I am in a good place physically. I am the fastest I have ever been right now.

Last Tuesday I broke my PB in the Sidney Time Trial. That tells me that I am biking faster than I have ever done.

Friday in our open water session I swam one of the 400m sections in under 6 minutes. Again, faster than I have ever done.

Today at our run workout I ran a 5:07 mile, faster by far than I have ever done. Sure, there is a story behind it. We were only doing three mile repeats instead of our usual six, and I accidentally went out too hard on the first one and slowed a little too much on the last one. But my previous best on the mile was 5:15. Last month I wouldn't even dream of doing a 5:07 mile, regardless of how I did the rest of the workout (which, although not well paced, was also a PB for me on best average). For all the metrics out there, a 5:07 mile corresponds to a 3:11 km, only better because you hold it for longer than a km.

I need to get past my bad race and look at my entire body of work this year, in which I have shown quite an improvement.

The run this morning was followed up by a pleasant 2 hour ride in the rain. Did 6 repeats up Observatory, which felt good. My legs were smashed from the run, but I didn't care.
One interesting note is that I had 1 powerbar before the ride (after the run) and one before my hill repeats, but my energy didn't show up until I was riding home, where I got a sudden burst of energy, accelerating up hills even though my legs were so tired. I will keep that in mind for my race day nutrition.

Happy training!

Reset

2009-08-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

This week has been a reset for me. After a good chat with Coach Dan, we have decided to take this week super easy. I am really only doing the Masters swims on Mon, Wed, and Fri (open water). I had an easy bike on Tues and an easy run on Weds. It has been strange taking so much time off! The strangest part is that I have had Tues and Thurs off work. Usually when I have days off work, it is a no brainer to do my heaviest workloads. Today though, I am doing NOTHING! Crazy. But I know I need it.

In fact, since this week has been easier, I actually had my first great swim workout in a while. We were doing descending 100s and 75s. I was descending from 1:35 to 1:25, and I could feel that my form was a lot better. Dan was basically hovering over me the whole time, which was great. I'm sure I was doing just as well on the 75s, but since it is kind of a strange distance I was getting confused on pace times and leading my lane a little astray!

Slowly I am starting to come around. I am starting to get some bursts of energy, which is great! Lots of naps and down time!

Worst Triathlon Ever - Race Report

2009-08-03T10:02:00.001-07:00

I have always wondered about the "bad race" when I read about it on some of the other triathlete blogs. Before Sunday I had never experienced a "bad race" in the sense of grossly underachieving what I had expected for myself. Now I have, and I am struggling mentally with what it means. I have already begun the thousand questions of why. I don't really mind having a bad race, but having a bad race two weeks before nationals and four weeks before Australia doesn't exactly put my mind at ease.

Pre-Race. I did everything that I usually do pre-race. Up early with a meal-replacement shake, banana, powerbar, and sports drink. Got to the race site nice and early, had a pretty good warmup, and was ready to go.

Swim: The swim started pretty frantically, with lots of fists flying. I got hit pretty hard in the right goggle, and I ended up losing vision on that side do to the extreme suction on my face! The funniest part about this is that it was probably my coach, as I noticed he was beside me about 100m later. After that I just concentrated on high turnover and never slowing down. I missed the draft of the first pack, but hung around in the line of other triathletes. I went off course a few times, but nothing too serious. I was feeling good, and although I didn't have as much energy as I would have liked, I felt like I as in for a good swim time.

When I got into T1 I quickly checked my watch and couldn't believe the time I saw. 27 minutes! What! I doubled checked my watch. Yep 27 minutes. Yep somehow I swam slower than last year, even though I am at least four times faster than last year. I told myself that the course must have been long, and to not worry about it. So I hopped on my bike and set off.

About 1 km into the bike Richard Knowlton passed me. #$%@. That means that I actually did have a ridiculously slow swim. Richard is an amazing triathlete, but we both have our different strengths, and this year the swim is mine. I was hoping to build up at least 3 minutes on him in the swim. That burst my bubble a little bit. He just zoomed ahead of me and I thought "ok you gotta go with him," but my legs thought otherwise. What the hell was wrong with me? Richard just kept getting farther and farther away. We have had basically the same bike splits in all of the tris this year so I didn't know what was going on. Trying to keep some sort of positivity in this race, I told myself that he was having an amazing bike, and I should be happy for him and just try and do my own race. I $%^&ed up the swim, but I shouldn't give up. The rest of the bike was pretty uneventful. I didn't have much to give. The rollers on Old West Saanich drained me before I even started. Last month the bike course was similar, but I felt 100 times more powerful. At the 20k mark Dan passed me. He must have had a lack lustre swim as well, as I expected him to be already ahead of me. He looked like a machine on the bike. I tried to follow him for 500m but gave up on that, knowing there was nothing in the my legs.

I did the bike in 1:09.07, about 4 minutes slower than I would have liked. I just caught Janet Neilson before T2. Realistically I should have caught her before. That was going to be the theme for the run.

Out of T1 in 1:37.26, about 0.07.26 slower than I expected. That's when it got pretty emotional. My mom was there cheering for me, and I put on a happy face as I ran by, knowing that if I didn't have a solid run, I would not beat my time from last year. Thousands of dollars and hours in training to not beat my time. I was pretty down. I tried to salvage the run into some sort of building training run. It reminded me of years past when I was a really bad swimmer and a good runner. I passed a lot of people on the run, which usually would make me happy. Today however, it was more like "how the $%#@ is this person still ahead of me????" Or "how the #$%@ was this person ever ahead of me?" I didn't care if there were relay teams or not.

At the start of the run there were clearly laid out km markers. After about 4 of those I didn't see any more. Maybe I was just in a fog. I should have just timed myself between the km markers that are at Elk Lake, but I wasn't thinking straight. I just kept putting one leg in front of the other, passing people one after the other. I just wanted this one done. As I headed for home and into the finishing shoot I could hear people cheering and I looked behind me and saw nothing. I crossed the finish line and saw Janet run through right after me. Great run Janet! I guess she put the burners on in the last little bit to catch me. Good thing the finish was where it was, because she would have.

I finished the run in 39:57, for a total time of 2:17:59. Exactly 1 minute faster than last year. 1 minute.

After the race I quickly packed my stuff up and left. I was slightly embarrassed to be wearing a Team Canada uniform. I am not trying to be pompous, as I respect everyone of all ages that wears that uniform, but at my age wearing that uniform says that you are serious and a contender. Well that wasn't me today.

The scariest thing about the swim was that I have no answer for it. The course may have been slow/long, but not that long. Maybe 5 seconds/ 100 long. I was 20 seconds per 100m slower. 20 seconds! That doesn't make sense. Did I go around a different buoy? I am still trying to figure that one out. And how could I have felt in any way that I was having a decent swim, when I was having the worst swim of my life? I didn't feel the usual crazy amount of energy at the start, but 20 Seconds!!!!!!!! It kept me up all night.

I am actually happy that my bike was so poor. It tells me that there was something wrong with me yesterday, which may explain a bit of the swim. It might have been the Time Trial I did on Tuesday, but with little biking since it shouldn't have been an issue. I do know that my legs burned more than usual on the hills. Also, whenever I tried to knock some dust off my legs with a 50m sprint, nothing happened. Usually I get a mini burst of energy, but not today.

The one decent thing that was not decent at all was the run. I am proud that I mentally didn't give up, and broke 40 mins in a triathlon for the first time. Yeah, I was expecting to smash the 40 minute mark, but for the circumstances, I will try and find a positive out of this. It could have been easy to just give up and jog it in, but I didn't. I put a solid effort in the run, but seeing that Janet had a faster run than me only solidifies the point that I wasn't able to compete today.

One thing I would like to say is that when I mention peoples names to compare to, I don't mean any harm at all. Janet had a fabulous race! To track down Lysanne was pretty amazing. Janet is the ultimate competitor, and seems to always show up for races. Richard had a great race too! To be so close to Travis Chater and Jairus Streight is amazing. I'm sure he would have liked a few more seconds off on the run, but I know he has not been running as much as he would like. Still, ballsy effort man! Great race for Coach Dan too! He bowed out before the run due to an injury, but would have finished really high in the race. If he wanted to run, he would have been top 15 for sure! Also a shout out to Sam Mazer, who also had a tough race. She gave me a few good knocks on the head in the swim for cutting her out of the draft, which I apologize for! You should have just climbed on top of me! It couldn't have made me any slower.

The new plan is to sit down with Coach Dan and discuss my planned taper around Nationals and Worlds. Although this race wasn't my goal race of the year, I didn't feel rested and bouncing off the walls ready to go on Sunday. I want to make sure I feel that for Nationals and Worlds. Yesterday I really never wanted to train again. Today I feel much better, and am ready to get back at it. The beauty of sports is that there are good times and bad, and the best athletes persevere.

Thanks to my peeps for all the best wishes, I really appreciate it.

Worst Triathlon Ever

2009-08-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

I think I will wait a few days to write a report on this one, since I don't want to use too many swear words. I just committed carbocide at Tim Hortons.

Pre Race Thoughts

2009-08-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

It's the day before the Sri Triathlon at Elk Lake. Where has the last three weeks gone???? I have had some great training, and have had a few days lately to relax and get a mental breather before this race.

Speaking of this race, it is basically the first big tune-up for the Worlds. It is the second Olympic distance race of the year, after Shawnigan. Shawnigan was pretty early in the season though, so this should be a better picture of what I can do in Kelowna and Australia. I plan to be very observant during this triathlon of how I am feeling, so that I can use the info to plan better for the next few. That being said, this is what I am hoping to do tomorrow.

Swim: 22:30-23:00. Pace / 100m: 1:30-1:33. I don't think the swim will be a wetsuit swim, which I am ok with. I keep my hips pretty high, so I probably have an advantage over some. Time-wise, I'm not really sure where I'm at these days. I have had some good and bad feedback on the swim in training, but I am usually very good at sucking it up for a race and going balls out. I swam 24:14 at Shawnigan,but it wasn't my best work.

Bike: 1:06.00 Avg Speed: 36.4. My last few races were sprints, but I was averaging over 39 kph, so I should be able to hold at least 36. I have been holding above 40kph on the time trials. I don't wanna kill myself too bad on the bike, so this is a very reachable goal.

Run: 39.00. Pace: 3:55. This should also be pretty attainable. I have been doing 10 x 1 km repeats at the lake holding sub 3:30. Not saying that 10 x 1 km is at all the same as running off of the bike for 10 straight, but 3:55 is pretty pedestrian for me, so I should be able to hold at least this pace.

Total Time: 2:09:30. That is with a 1 minute T1 and 30 second T2. I would really love to go sub 2:10.00 on this one. I probably have a better chance on doing this tomorrow rather than in Kelowna, which is a tougher course.

Out do to a little race prep on the bike!

Good luck to everyone!

Training, Training and a Race Report

2009-07-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

Training training training. That's what I do. I look like a slob at work, coming off of a 3+ hour training day with just enough time to hop in the shower before showing up to slog it for another 6-8 hours at night. Training has been hard to describe. So much good but not without the bad. I don't know what has happened to my swimming. I am definitely not getting slower, but I feel like I am worse. Probably because I have been doing so much open water lately. I have definitely lost confidence that I am an OK swimmer. These days I dread jumping into the pool, where I meet training partners like Lindsey, who can miss like 2 weeks of Masters and still jump in and push me to my utmost limit. While I gasp for air on the wall just trying to hold her back, she sighs lightly and says "woo tough one today." ha ha. I have a lot of respect for that girl. It would be the easiest swim or one that is torture and she still has the same attitude. I wish I could say that I do the same.

Coach D and I have been trying to figure out why I suck so much in the open water. We have been trying different things, and now sometimes in the water I'm not sure where I started! How did I swim two months ago? Today in the pool Sabrina told me that I have the largest spray from my kick in the pool. That's cool. I wonder where all that power is going, since I am the worst kicker in the group!

Anyhow, frustrations aside, biking and running have been going great. I did a lot of running last week, including two hard interval sessions. Biking has taken a back seat this week, after about 2 months of bike specific work. I had another amazing run session going at Elk this Saturday where I attempted to stay with Magali and Kerry for the km repeats. OMG it was hard. They were running around 3:20-3:38 kms. Coach Lance and Paul say that the km is about 10 seconds slow. That was probably the first time I have ever ran 3:10-3:15 kms. Every time we started, the girls would shoot off like a cannon, while I would struggle to close the gap in the first km. I bowed out after 6/10 repeats, since my hamstring was crying for mercy in that scary "i'm gonna snap any time" way. I also thought that I should waste the $30 entry fee for the Esquimalt 8k the next day, and actually run half decent. On to the race.....

Although I bowed out early from my workout the day before, I was still really tight. I took a nice light warmup with some A,B,Cs and then headed up to the start line. My goal for the race was to run consistently and smoothly, preparing for the run leg of my next tri. I went with my new racing flats, sans socks, to get used to them. This would be my longest run in these flats. I had done two 5km run legs in sprint triathlons with them, and am eager to see how they will hold up in longer distances. I am not the most agile runner, so I was slightly worried about running hard in flats.

The race started and I kept it pretty chill. It always amazes me how fast some people go at the beginning of the race. These people are in every race, and know who is going to and not going to beat them, yet they still insist on sprinting ahead of the leaders like they belong there ha! To the dude that momentarily passed Marilyn Arsenault doing 3 minute kms before fading into the dust, that was just silly!

Anyhow, I settled into a rhythm after a 3:35 1st km, knocking off 3:40s for a few kms. Jeff Hunt was around me, and that was nice to key off of. I thought he may hold a little back for his second race of the day, so I decided to not pace off him. There was nobody else to go with, so I just ran by myself the whole way. 3:40, 3:40, 3:40. It was getting a little strange. I just kept the same pace the whole way.

At km 6, things started to unravel. It was hot out. I was sweating. My feet were sweating. For the last few kms I was reeling a PIHer in that went out waay to fast and was fading fast. I swear he was hitting 3:15 kms at the start, and was now hitting around 3:45. Unfortunately, I could feel the blisters starting under my feet. I could actually feel the liquid shifting under my weight. I held steady for the second to last km at 3:40, but the pain became too much by the last km. I just wanted to finish. To his credit, the PIH guy held it together long enough and had a great race. I finished with a 4 minute km for a time of 29:59.995. I actually saw the official results and that's what it said ha!

I probably would have run slightly faster at the end had I known I was even close to 30 minutes. O well. I just wanted to get that damn show off. Surveying the damage, I had three blisters, each bigger that the size of a quarter. Another blister was on my heel. Not cool. How am I supposed to run a 10km leg in a tri, if I can't even deal with 8k? Unfortunately, I think these shoes are done. Either I'm not a racing flat guy, or not a Saucony guy. I'm going back to my ol' Nike's.

After a post race brekky with my family, I headed out for a bike ride in the 30 degree heat. Damn it was hot. It was so hot that I ditched my usually jersey and put on a racing top. I decided not to bring my extra tube and stuff, since I haven't had a flat in a while and it was to be a short ride. You know what happened. I got stuck on the highway with no phone, no money and a 3 km walk in my socks to the nearest gas station. With all of the blisters, it was pretty hellish. A $36 (honestly it was like $2/ km!!!) cab ride later, I was home and grumpy! Had to work in the night, which I barely managed with a heavily taped up foot.

Today was an ugly swim that I will not talk about. I'm over it. I just want a solid week of training before the Self Transcendence tri this weekend. Swim and Bike tomorrow. Happy training.

Mj

Quick Pick

2009-07-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Here's a cool pic from this Saturday's pro workout from Kerry Spearing's blog. That's us leading the women's pack, before getting reeled in on the final two!

Awesome!

2009-07-19T22:35:00.000-07:00

The past few training sessions can only be described as awesome.

In my last post I talked about how excited I was to finally get to run with some of the pros. Well, Saturday morning I shot out of bed 2 minutes before my alarm went off (after working late), and was rearing to go to Elk Lake. I grabbed my usual granola and double espresso and headed to the lake. I was excited to see the whole Lifesport Pro camp there, with some extra people sprinkled on top such as Simon Whitfield and Andrew McCartney. I am always star struck when I am around such greatness. It really is like golfing with Tiger Woods. You get to see up close the best the sport has to offer!

Anyhow, for the workout we were doing 6 x 1 mile repeats. Dan had a sore knee so he wasn't running. I was hoping that he was, since I wanted to gage my pace off of him, to prevent me from going out too fast. I was slated to go with the main Women's pack. With multiple Ironman titles in the group, I was obviously stoked to be there!

After a solid warmup we started our first interval. I noticed that the group was taking it pretty conservative the first mile, so I headed to the front to lead. Lucy Smith and Magali Tisseyre shot off the front, and were out of sight pretty quick. Lucy was looking sooo good today! Magali stuck with her for the first mile, which ended up being 5:16, and suffered a bit after that. I got a little gap on the rest of the girls, but I wasn't trying to extend it or anything. I wasn't about to go out and try and show up these girls! They know what they are doing! Did the first one around 5:28. After the first mile Kerry Spearing, who was just ahead of me, asked if I wanted to run with her. I knew it was a bit of a stretch for me, but I wasn't going to say no! We did the second mile in 5:21 or something. It was fast!

Kerry obviously thought it was fast as well, as she slowed down a bit on the next mile. By this time though Bree Wee decided that she was gonna take charge and set the pace with me for the next two reps. It was so fun to run with her. It was all positive and all strong! I was really having a great day! We were doing mid twenty's for the repeats. Reps 5 and 6 were pretty tough for me. Bree just has so much more endurance than me. She grabbed about a 3 second gap on rep number five, and never looked back. It was pretty funny having Coach Paul riding beside Bree yelling at her, and Coach Dan riding behind me yelling at me to go hard! I gave it everything I had to catch her, getting my heart rate up to 191 (100%), but Bree was too strong!

It was an amazing day, with Simon running 4:25 miles, and me and the girls following. It's too bad the pros aren't here every week! When I got home I was pretty sore, so I hopped on the bike for an hour and a half to flush the legs out! All in all a pretty amazing day. I think there are some more pictures to come, but I snagged these ones from Bree's Blog (Thanks Bree!)

The pep talk before the workout

The most intense practice run start I have ever experienced ha! Look at Simon leaning on the right!

Fun in the sun

2009-07-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

A few days since my last post. I am over my beating by the pros, especially since I was beaten again this morning at Thetis lake. But who am I kidding? It's the best

One thing that is different about the pros being in town is the length and difficulty of the workouts. They are just on another level. This morning at Thetis we had a 4k swim that had a 1000m segment, two 150m hard segments, and 2 400m segments. Being incredibly slow compared to the rest of the group, I only got about 10 seconds to regroup before the next effort. On the last rep, we were doing a pair race, where you went off in pairs and had to work together to win. I got all of about 15 seconds of rest before Coach Paul put me with Lance, who has been swimming amazing these days. I thought "o my god here we go." ha ha.

Lance was really nice to put up with me on this one. He did everything short of a tow rope to keep me going. I think I even saw him at one point doing backstroke to watch me! Sad I know!

What it did do was force me to go the hardest on the last rep of the day, which is good.

I did the swim today without a wetsuit. I have now figured out that I don't swim bad in a wetsuit, and I don't swim bad in open water, I just swim bad on longer intervals ha ha!. The lack of wetsuit did nothing to help my dragging ass. I just do not have the endurance in longer interval swims. It's crazy. O well, I can only improve so much in one year. I am happy with knocking off 4 minutes on my 1.5k swim time.

After the swim I couldn't help but get a few picks with some of the pros that I admire most. I snapped one with Magali and one with Bree. I swear Magali is the next big deal. I love that after we took the pick she said "thanks" to me. So nice ha ha! Those pics are to come. But Bree snapped the awesome pic of the group that is on her blog.

Look at me in the middle like I'm some bigshot ha ha!

I'm really excited for tomorrow 'cause it is my first chance to run with them (I think). I think it will be a lot more enjoyable to do one of my better disciplines with the group!

Happy training!

Humble Pie

2009-07-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna lie. Yesterday I was dominated. I was ok about it at the time, but upon further reflection I am a little embarrassed.

Sure, there's nothing to be embarrassed about when you are competing against some of the top athletes in the world. But I could have, should have done better! I was pretty amazed to show up to our usual Wednesday swim practice at Durrance Lake and see Linsey Corbin, Magali Tisseyre, Brent Poulson, and Bree Wee among the throng of other pros in town for the week. I was especially star struck to see Linsey and Magali. Linsey is one of the top Ironman athletes, and Magali has posted the fastest 70.3 time for a woman this year.

Needless to say, the swim was pretty fast paced. I am not usually in the front pack on the swim, but I couldn't believe that after about 20 meters, I was at least 15 meters behind already! In fact, I was so far behind at some points that they started the next segment without me. It was crazy. At one point we were doing an out and back, and I turned around before the "turnaround" to latch on to the back of the pack to see what it was like. Well that lasted for a solid 10 seconds ha ha ha. I couldn't even bear to do the last segment of the workout. It was just too much for me. Even Coach Dan sat one rep out. As I got out of the water Coach Lance seemed to read my face perfectly, saying "makes you feel pretty average huh?" ha ha.

I'm really not that upset about it. I only wish that I could have done a run or bike with them, instead of my weakest discipline. It would be amazing to be a little more competitive with them. It did shoot me into reality though of how far I am from being a pro. Not that I thought I was. These athletes are long course, so technically they should be a little slower than short coursers. Believe me they aren't! It will make me think twice next time I put myself as an "elite" in a race that's for sure!

Other than that training has been going well. I damn near killed myself on a run this morning in order to make up for yesterday's swim! I was up all night thinking about it!

Happy training!

Update

2009-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

The Numbers

Actual Time 13:40
Planned Time 13:40
Hours from ATP 0:00
Swim Distance 9300 m
Bike Distance 145.85 km
Run Distance 40.87 km
Brick Distance 35 km

First a quick comment on my numbs for this week. 145k of bike intervals, 40k of running intervals, and a brick. I'm pretty stoked! Swimming was a little light this week, but it was still good work. It's pretty amazing that my planned time and actual time are the exact same, as I was under time on some workouts and over time on others! Although the hours are not overly amazing, almost every minute of that time is used to do something productive. I don't think I could handle any more training in my life!

Training has been going great since the Tri of Compassion. I have stepped my running mileage up quite a bit, so my legs have been constantly sore this week. I have also been doing lots of speed work in running and biking, which has taken its toll as well. I don't mind though. I know the benefits of recovery for endurance athletes, but I can't help but be a little smug when my legs burn from going up a flight of stairs at night. I'm working hard, and getting faster. Swimming has been going good too. I only had three swim w/os this week. The first one I already described. The second one was a 10 x 50 followed by a 6 x 200, which absolutely demolished me. It was a classic blow up in the pool. I always forget that a set of 50s followed by longer intervals always kills me, and this time was no different. The 3rd and 4th 200s were the worst, but I managed to salvage a somewhat respectable time for the 5th and 6th. The third swim was the usual Thetis Lake swim, where I was pretty competitive right from the start. I usually take a few intervals to get going, so I was happy. I still have to work on my form in a wetsuit. I don't know why I can't swim the same as the pool!

I also had some monster shifts at work, and since I do not wear very good shoes, it has taken a toll on the legs as well. To be honest, I am really proud of myself that I have finished all of my workouts this week. This next week of training is going to be tough. I have a wedding on Saturday and golfing on Sunday, so I will have to bank a lot of workouts during the week in between work! One day I will sleep in.

Mj

Tri of Compassion - Race Report

2009-07-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

First of all, I want to say that I love this race. As long as I am in town, I will always do this one. My family lives on one of the streets that the run goes down, so I feel like it's a hometown race. Everyone including my grandma stands out on the lawn shouting encouragement!

I stated to my coach that depending on the field, one of my goals for this year was to win this race. When I got to race package pickup and saw names like Travis Chater and Allan Boos, I knew that my hopes of first were probably too high. That being said, I was really excited to race against these guys. I thought I might be able to give them a run early, or at least take away some positives. As of a year ago, these guys were completely on another planet regarding triathlon fitness. Now, I feel like I am closer than ever to being on the same step as them.

The triathlon itself cannot be any more athlete friendly. The swim is in a pool, the bike is 3 laps of a pretty flat course, and the run is along the beautiful shoreline of Esquimalt. Another nice thing that was changed this year was the start times. Last year the top triathletes started at 12:30, which is way too late if it is hot. This year, the first heat went off at 6:00 am (I feel bad for those guys!), so that we could go off at 9:30 am.

I found myself in a lane with Christopher Sundby, who is a great young triathlete. I knew he would have a good swim so my goal was to stick right on his toes for the swim. For possibly the first time in a pool swim tri, we were given a nice amount of time to warmup. I probably got in around 500m of solid warmup before we lined up to start.

The swim felt good. I had tons of energy. I caught up to Christopher after 1 lap (we went off in 5 second intervals), and stick with him for the entire swim. The other two people in our lane were either not feeling good that day, or thought they were better swimmers! We passed both after about 7 laps. It was funny because for both swimmers Chris was able to pass them on the wall, while I had to pass both mid lane. It wasn't a big deal though, since the lanes were nice and wide, and 3 people could fit easily. Because of this, I didn't try to overdo it when passing. I just slowly climbed up to the swimmer until be both hit the end wall more or less even. The second swimmer however, didn't see me (I don't know how), and as we both came up to the wall she suddenly turned right into me. I didn't really mind at all, since I am used to contact from open water practice and races, but I'm sure she wasn't too thrilled to get a foot in the face! I felt kinda bad. I finished the swim in 7:01. That is 25 seconds faster than last year. For a 500m swim, that's pretty sweet! Last year's swim was considered the swim of my life. I jumped out right behind Christopher. To show how different my wetsuit swimming is to my pool swimming, I came out of the water over half a minute behind Chris 2 weeks ago at the New Balance Sprint.

T1 was as smooth as it gets. Superman onto my bike, with my elastics perfectly placing my shoes, and I was off.

The bike was good. Last year on the bike, I duelled it out with a guy the entire way, and it really helped my time. This year I was all on my own. I came out of the water right behind Allan Boos (another positive for the day), and I knew Travis Chater was out way before me, so I figured I was in third. Riding solo is definitely harder. You think more about the pain. My first lap went by in 11.12.28, which is slower than I wanted but it included all of the transition time and putting my shoes on, so I wasn't worried. Second lap was done in 9:31. I passed Don from Fort Street Cycle on this lap, who was the bike part of the FSC relay team that had Kirsten Sweetland as the swimmer. After passing him I was almost certain that I was third. The final lap was done in 10.42.95 (again with some transition stuff in there), and I was done the bike in 31.28.00 (31.55.00 including transitions).

T2 was completely the opposite of T1. It was my first real "ordeal" of the year. I come off the bike feeling good, and go to slip on my new racing flats. These flats are a little tricky to get into. There is an elastic band near the toe of the shoe that sometimes catches my pinkie toe in it. At the New Balance race, I just ignored it. At this race though, it got caught in an awkward angle and after about 20 steps I knew I wasn't going to be able to continue with it. I stopped and pulled my foot out of the shoe. Unfortunately, the in-sole came out with it. Well I have played with these in-soles before and I know they are not easy to get back in, so I just decided to forget about it and run without it. I was running with an in-sole in my hand! One of the volunteers kindly took it for me.

After about 100 meters I started to feel the pain. It was like a knife stabbing the arch of my foot. Although there is not a lot in a racing flat, those flimsy in-soles make a world of difference! There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to fight through the pain. My family was waiting along the route, and I would continute with a broken leg if it meant running by them! I started to run on the outside of my shoe. It sounds dumb, but in the moment you just do whatever the hell you can! The pain started to subside somewhat, though I think it was more me getting used to it. That's when another problem started, my nutrition.

I wanted to change it up a little bit this race. I hate eating gels. I can barely get them down before a race. I always feel better in training with a little bit of solid food in my stomach. So today, I tried eating a powerbar 20 minutes before the race. This combined with half a water bottle of gatoraid was a bad combo. Too many carbs for such an intense race. I think the powerbar thing could work, but only in an Olympic distance race or longer. This race was just too intense for it.

So here I am 200 m in on the run, with a sharp pain in my foot and I am trying not to puke. I family's house is coming up, and I am already planning where to puke when I turn the corner after seeing them. It felt bad. I could feed the jostling in my stomach. Thank god the first 500m of the course are basically a slight downhill. Without that, I don't know what would have happened. After about 900m, I started to feel slightly better. By slightly better, I mean I wasn't going to immediately puke, but the feeling was still there. It is the feeling when I am sprinting with Dan on the last of 10- km repeats at Elk Lake.

But there were also positives that I was taking note of during the run. First, my legs felt great. I went to get a bike fit earlier in the year, because I was having a hard time on the run with sore legs around my ankles. We switched things up, and now I feel much better off the bike! If my stomach was feeling better, I could have pushed it a lot harder. Also, my form felt really good. Since I couldn't go as hard as I wanted to, I concentrated on good form and high knees. This really helped me keep my speed during the tougher sections of the course. At the turn-around there was someone about a minute behind me looking strong, so I picked it up as hard as I could and headed for home. I crossed the line in 57:26 with an 18:30 run time. Good for 3rd place overall. Let the analysis begin.

I read an article by Mark Allan a while back talking about his trials in Kona. He couldn't understand why he was consistently having a sub par run, when running was his strength. He said he finally realized that he wasn't running well because his swimming and biking were not strong enough, which didn't leave him as much energy on the run compared to others. This is exactly how I feel I have improved. Looking at last year's time, I was over a minute and a half faster, which is pretty good on such a short course, where time is hard to find. My swim was obviously better than last year,but my bike was only 15 seconds faster than last year.

Let me tell you, I am ten times better at cycling than I was last year. But I remember that last year, I had the ride of my life. And last year, when I got on the run, I had a terrible go at it. This year, due to the increased fitness on the bike and swim, I had a run that was almost a minute faster than last year. This decrease in run time is not due to me being that much better at running. In fact, I have been doing fairly low mileage for a while now compared to cycling and swimming. It is due to me being a better all around triathlete compared to last year. So this I am happy about! This is including my debacle with my shoes and nutrition! I am also fairly certain that I could have run a second 5 km faster if we were doing an Olympic distance event. I take a while to get settled on the run, so the Sprint distance does not suite me as well. All in all I think it was a great day shared by family and friends. It was also my first time ever winning prize money! $50 bucks goes a long way these days, so I am extremely pleased!

I cannot wait to do a solid block of training before the Self Transcendence Tri in August. I started today with a 20 x 100 main set in the pool, where I was consistently under 1:25, and dropped to 1:21 on the last few. I wanted the pain. It felt so good!

Happy training!

Training Update

2009-06-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

This week following the race has been fantastic! I think the extra confidence of a good showing on Sunday in both the swim and run has given me more confidence to push even harder.

After a Monday off, I had a good Tuesday time trial. Although my legs were still very heavy, I still put in a time that was about 20 seconds off my PB. The legs feel strong on the bike, so I am happy with my progress. Wednesday was the first practice for a little group that I created to do some running intervals once a week. It's another way that I am getting back to why I started this sport in the first place, to have fun. It was on a track, so I was able to do a hard workout of 8 x 1 min hard, 1 min steady.

After that I headed to the pool to do a nice workout of 150's. I felt strong the whole time, which is the continuation of my confidence I gained from Sunday.

Thursday was a nice interval session on the bike and swim sprint session later in the evening. Friday was our open water swim at Thetis. O man was it good! The best swim I have ever had! I pushed the 3 k set hard, and was rewarded with a finish that was 3-4 people ahead of where I usually come. Top it off with a nice steady 1 hr run after and then off to work!

This morning was another breakthrough workout, with mile repeats at Elk/Beaver Lake. I started with 5:20 and 5:22 miles, and finished with a 5:15 mile (3:16/km). Some other people in our group were having breakthrough workouts, and I just fed off the energy. An amazing morning for sure!

It sure is nice to have a complete week of good workouts. I was talking to Coach Dan after practice and I was telling him how good I feel now. No injuries (knock on wood), and tons of energy for each workout! Life sure is good ha!

Happy training!

Secondo Posto - Race Report

2009-06-21T21:08:00.000-07:00

I was excited for this race. I wanted to race hard and fast. Today, I achieved that goal.

I made it out to the race site this morning nice and early to get a full warmup in. 2km tempo run, as well as a full swim warmup with drills had me feeling pretty good before the gun went off. My goal was to swim as hard as I could manage for the short 500m swim. I wanted to prove to myself that I can swim in a wetsuit without too much fatigue.

As the gun went off, I executed the classic dolphin dive into the water (thanks Lifesport HA), and was off at a hard pace. I could see a line of people to my right getting away, so I joined in on the train of probably 10 people and swam as hard as I could comfortably. I was supposed to not use my legs as much, but I used them quite a bit during the short swim to bridge gaps, catch up to my draftee, and pull away from the feet grabbers! I got out of the water in 7:13, good enough for a 1:27 / 100m pace. My goal race pace this year in the Olympic distance is 1:30, so I was pretty happy. I know I still have a lot of work to stretch this pace out for 3 times the distance, but I think it will come together later in the season.

I came out of the water in 10th place. Not too bad! I saw coach Dan cheering for me, and I knew he was thinking that I had a pretty good swim for my ability. His encouragement whisked me into T1. I had heard many racers before the race saying that they were going to go without a wetsuit, as they thought it would take more time to get it off than the time it would save to wear it in the swim. I wanted to go in a wetsuit for two reasons. First, I want to practice my T1 in a wetsuit, and second I can get out of it fast enough to make it worth while. I zipped through transition with the third fastest of the day (including the non-wetsuiters), and all of a sudden found myself in 7th out of T1. This is how important quick transitions are! I gained three spots before even getting on the bike!

The bike was hard. I am used to hard rides at the Sidney TT, but this course had some good hills that burned the lungs. I immediately passed a bunch of people on the bike, but one of the guys that I passed 2 minutes before caught back up to me and looked strong. I knew immediately that this guy (Jairus Streight) was going to be one of the leaders and I knew I had to stay with him. In the sprint distance, you can't let anyone get away, or your done. After we both almost wiped out on the first corner (he blew through the pylons past the cop car), I broke the ice and we chatted for a second before agreeing that we should hammer the bike course and push each other in case we weren't in the lead. We switched the lead 4 or 5 more times on the route, until another rider (Ben Rutledge) somehow caught up to us. It was now three of us, and we were informed that we were the leaders. It was so freaking exciting! This was the first lead group I have ever been a part of. Ben was also biking strong, so Jairus and I just held on until the final stretch and we all headed into T2 together.

Here is another example of why a quick transition is important. I was coming into T2 as the third guy of the three man group. While the other two guys were casually getting out of their shoes as we rolled slightly downhill into T2, I had already gotten my shoes off and was still pedaling hard with my feet on top of the shoes. I passed Ben with about 100m to go, and made up about 10 seconds on Jairus, all for just executing a good bike entry. I finished the bike in 33:56 (38.9 km/hr), good for the second fastest of the day behind Ben. After the quickest transition of the day in T2, I was first out onto the race course.

Holy crap I was excited. I came 1st in a race earlier this year, but it was a staggered heat start, so I had no idea where I was. This time, I am running out of T2 in first place with the leader biker guy in front of me and Steve King yelling my name with everyone cheering! Coach Dan and Paul were both cheering as I came out, and I have to admit it was one of the best feelings I have had in the sport to date. After about 400m Jairus caught up to me, took one deep breath, and dropped me. I tried to stay close, but he was just too strong. I don't feel like I lost the lead at all. He had taken it from me, and today had the better legs. At the run turnaround Jairus had about 35-40 seconds on me, while I was ahead of Ben by about the same margin. We had distanced ourselves so much from the rest of the field on the bike that the top three had already been determined, we just had to figure out our placements. At around the 4km mark I started to settle down with my breathing, and I turned it up a little. I probably didn't lose much more ground to Jairus at that point, but the lead was too large. I broke the tape for second place in a time of 1:02.36, with a run time of 19:30.

A few thoughts on the race....

First, I was super happy with my swim, enough said! The bike was hard as hell, but my legs felt pretty good after. This is the result of all the hard work Dan and I have put in to get my biking ability closer to my running. The transitions were amazing. I must have had the fastest combined transition times. The run was also good. Although not as fast as I was hoping for, this could be the result of a few things. First, I don't know how much to expect on the run after giving it pretty hard on the bike. I was NOT going to let those guys go ahead of me. I figure that it hurt my run a little, but I'm not about to complain. I also feel that the sprint distance run (5km) is not my best run distance. I am notorious for taking a while to calm down my breathing and get in the zone, but the 5 k distance doesn't really give you any time to sort yourself out. So, considering all of this I am REALLY HAPPY with my race.

Here is a couple of finishing pics, as well as the legendary post-race handshake by Bob Saunders of Saunders Subaru. That guy is an amazing supporter of local sport here in Victoria! He shakes every finisher's hand.

I think the biggest thing for me to work on in the next while is some endurance. I want to do some longer rides and runs to get my body used to the longer races.
Cheers

Pre-Race Thoughts

2009-06-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

This week has been a good week workout wise. Although it has been pretty low mileage, I needed a mental break from long swims, so it has been nice.

Tuesday was a fast paced day. I did a track workout with Nick, which involved a big warmup and cooldown with a 2 x 8 minute all out go on the track in between. I actually collapsed after the second repeat, but it was nice to feel fast and push hard in the workout.

I did the Sidney TT later that evening, with good results. About 20 seconds off my PB, but still averaging over 40km/hr. For being pretty fatigued from the track workout, I'll take it.

Wednesday I convocated from UVic! BSc Honours degree with distinction! It was an amazing day. I had planned to do at least one workout in the morning before, but things didn't fall into place and I ended up having an unscheduled day off.

Thursday and Friday I made up the lost workouts with good swims at the pool and Thetis lake. Add in another thresh workout on the bike and another short set in the pool today (working out beside Kirsten Sweetland no less!) and I am ready to go for tomorrow's race.

I am only doing the sprint portion of the New Balance Half Iron tomorrow, but I am really excited about it. I would do the half IM, but frankly I cannot afford it, and I'm happy to do the sprint. The sprint distance allows me to work on almost everything technical about triathlon, but I can basically train through it and require little or no recovery after. I'm not sure who is in the field tomorrow, but I would like to place top 3 or even win it. I am basing this on the sprint race in Shawnigan a month ago, where I would have been right up with the leaders if I had done that distance. The most important thing I want to do tomorrow is race hard. I want to kick it up a notch on the run, which I didn't do last race. I just trimmed my wetsuit, and while practicing my swim exit on Friday, managed to slip it off like butter! I think I will save at least 20 seconds in transition now!

Better go bring my bike to T1...

Grad

Highs and Lows

2009-06-15T19:57:00.000-07:00

This really has been a week of good and bad performances in my training. After my last triathlon I have really changed my outlook on training to enjoying the highs and laughing at the lows. I believe that the odd bad workout re-affirms that you are training hard. Anyways.....

A few highlights from the week. On Wednesday, I had probably the best swim workout of the year. It was dominant! If I was swimming against myself the week before, I would have kicked my own ass. We were doing repeats of 1 x 400, followed by 2 x 100 and 4 x 50. I think we did it four times. Each time, my 400 split dropped. I think I got it down to 5:47, which is probably the best I have ever swam that distance in. I was in the zone. I took each 100 of the 400 to focus on something different. First 100 hard to avoid any drafting opps by my fellow athletes, second 100 focusing on form, 3rd 100 kicking it up a notch, and 4th 100 just trying to hang on. My 100 repeats were averaging around 1:23-1:25, which is pretty good after 400 repeats. Those who do longer repeats followed by shorter 100s and 50s know that it is pretty hard to find an extra second or two on the shorter reps after the 400s.

Friday was the exact opposite feeling. It was our open water practice at Thetis lake. It was ugly. I knew something was wrong with the positioning of my suit during the warm up. My shoulders were already sore after 400m, and the suit did not feel smooth at all. After attempting to adjust it in shallow water, it just never sat right. After a few 400m hard efforts out to the islands and back, I didn't know if I was going to make it on the last 1500m loop around both islands. I talked to Coach Dan and he said that if I wanted to stop, I should just loop around the first island (1200m) instead of the second one like everyone else. I couldn't say no to this but knew that the minute I committed to going out to the islands, I would do the far island, as it is not much more in the grand scheme of things! I finished the workout, but was dead last of the faster swimmers. The crew was surprised at my slowness. I am not as good in the open water as the pool, but today was extra brutal.

Post workout, Dan was telling me that I kick waaaay too much and need to settle that down, and need to find the rhythm that I have in the pool. I really got to work on it! I think I just have to stop being a wimp and bust my ass in the wetsuit, even if it feels 10 times worse than the pool.

Saturday was a tough 10 x 1km repeat session at Elk/Beaver. I felt good at the beginning with some 3:30 kms, but drifted up to 3:39 by number 10. I think I need to eat a bit more before this workout. By the end of the set we usually have been working out for over 1.5 hours, so I need to keep that in mind. I took Sunday off, as I had banked the workouts earlier in the week and had a nice one night camping trip up island. Tomorrow will be a nice run with Nick on the track as well as the Sidney TT. Should be fun!

Training Update

2009-06-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to throw a little update up on my training since my "great day" ha ha. Friday was another "great day" with the groups first open water swim of the year at Thetis Lake. OMG was it beautiful. I barely had time to admire my surroundings before Paul put us through a hard workout that totalled around 3.5k. My shoulders were sore! I'm super excited about these workouts however, since I did no training in my wetsuit last year and didn't feel good once racing in it. After the swim I had a nice solid 1 hour tempo run through Oak Bay. Finished the night off with a 7 hour shift at the Yacht Club, and I was off to bed!

Saturday was a really solid run at Elk Beaver with the squad. I had a few pops the night before at the Sticky Wicket, but I put it out of my head and hit the 4 x 3km ramp up hard to finish in a high zone 4 heart rate. I wouldn't have did as well if Dan wasn't pushing me the whole way, keeping me honest. Sometimes I'm not sure which is the better bang for my buck, Dan giving me an expert training plan or Dan running and biking with me! I'm pretty lucky to have a coach like that.

After another night out (all my friends from out of town are here this week for a reunion), I managed to get a good long ride in on Sunday that included 8 balls out sprints for a minute up the Observatory hill. I pretty much flew up the hill at 30k per for 30 seconds until me legs couldn't take it any more and I willed my slow ass up for the last 30 seconds. After that it was a 25 minute recovery run in my new racing flats. The jury is still out on the shoes..... I don't find the left one that comfortable, and I'm pretty sure a nice new expensive pair of flats should be comfortable. On the other hand, I was pretty tired that day, so I'm gonna give them one more change to impress me before I switch them for something else!

Today was a good set in the pool with a MS of 40 x 50 on 50 seconds for the first 20, and 55 seconds for the second. I was leading the lane, and could tell that by 20, the others were barely hanging on to the time. Coach Paul switched it up, which gave us some much needed rest as well, and I was able to knock a few more seconds off my 50m times by the end!

One thing I have been thinking of lately is the intensity of all of my workouts this year compared to last. Although I am not raking up the hours every week compared to other athletes, I can honestly say that none of my time spent working out has any "junk miles" in it. All but 2 workouts are with Lifesport or Nick or others, and they are always hard (even "recovery" workouts with Nick ha ). Although it is a little more difficult to mentally get psyched for every workout when you know they are all going to be intense, I feel as if I am using my time so much better this year than last. If I didn't have to work full time all summer on my feet, I think I would get a lot more recovery time and could put even more intensity in my workouts.

Here are some pics from the Thetis swim. They are in order:

1) The early crew with Coach Paul getting ready to go

2) Getting changed with the camera crews in the background. They were filming Simon Whitfield and the rest of the Olympic team.

3) Lance Watson sporting the "Simon suit"

Great Day

2009-06-04T22:08:00.001-07:00

Today was what I would call a great day.

It started with a trip to the pool in the am to work on form, followed by a trip to Thetis lake with my buddy to enjoy the 30+ degrees we are experiencing right now in Victoria! After a few beers on the patio at the pub, I rushed home to quickly eat waffles (yeah I know, but they were the only thing I could eat in 10 minutes), and headed to Commonwealth Pool for the Lifesport brick workout.

The workout was tough. I don't think the beers adversely affected me much at all, but I am no good in the heat and even though I was partly in the shade, the hot weather was pretty draining.
After a tough 5 x (5 minute on, 3 minute recovery) main set on the bike, we headed out for a 5,5,5,5 min run in zones 2,3,4,1. This run felt incredible. Both Coach Dan and I were feeling good, and we decided to run a little further and hit the zone 4 interval on the old fartlek area past the beaver lake beach. It was so tough and so good. We fed off each other well, and I have never felt so eager and so happy to push it. I could do a workout like tonight's every day.

The cold is all but gone. I still get a sore throat when I am breathing hard in workouts, but I can live with that! Tomorrow is my first open water swim practice....well...ever! 7:45 am, but that is the only time you get Thetis lake to yourself and it will be nice and cool so we can wear our wetsuits! 'Till next time!

Cross Your Fingers

2009-06-03T10:38:00.001-07:00

I don't want to jinx it, but I think I am finally turning the corner on my cold. Some symptoms are still there, but my energy levels are creeping back up to normal (I actually look forward to working out again), and my performance seems to be slowly coming back. Monday's swim was good. By good I mean I completed it without wanting to float face down in the pool. I held 1:30s or less for the entire 20 x 100 main set, which I have to be happy with considering the last two weeks.

Since there is a big heat wave over Victoria right now (it hit a record breaking 30 degrees yesterday at 5:00 pm, about 10 degrees hotter than the normal temp), I have been enjoying the outdoors as much as possible. Biking to work and other workouts reminds me of the joy of working out for fun, instead of improvements.

I had a nice Fartlek run yesterday along Dallas road, where there was a nice breeze to keep me cool. Later that night was the Sidney TT. I don't think there is anything better than doing a TT at 7 pm when it is still 25 degrees and no wind! I obliterated by PB on this course, clocking in at 26:26, over a minute faster than my previous PB. Not sure if this was due to

i) My new bike fit
ii) Not working out as much for the past week
iii) An instant response to my new regiment of l-glutamine (who knows?)
iv) The conditions were fast today

I think it may be a combo of all of the above. I do think it was a fast course today, since Dan was at least 2 minutes ahead of me, which would give him quite an improvement on his times as well. I'll have to wait for the official results to be posted.

Woke up this morning with a sore throat (what's new?), but overall I feel good today. Off to the pool now. Thanks to Heather for taking these awesome pictures!

What a week

2009-05-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

This week has been crazy. Here I was thinking I was over my cold, only to have it come back full force. After the race on Sunday, I started to feel weak and sick again. Since then, I have not done many workouts. The workouts I have done have been pretty tame. I am avoiding the pool altogether for two reasons. One, it tires me out more than the other sports and I am left feeling exhausted for the rest of the day. The second reason is that I don't want to infect anyone else on the Lifesport team. There are already two or three people with the same cold, and I don't want to spread it.

One thing I have been reflecting on during this impromptu break, is the recent mental block I have been feeling in training. Being a hockey fan, I always wondered what it would be like for a top draft pick to go from being the best player in his junior league to the NHL, filled with guys that were all the best in their leagues, but 30 pounds heavier and stronger. I think I have been experiencing a bit of that this year.

Last year, almost all of my workouts consisted of me being near the top of the heap in ability. This year, I have taken the leap and joined a team, as well as decided to do workouts with other people outside of triathlon. It has been humbling to say the least. I'm not saying that I used to think I was hot s#$*t or anything, but I do think you workout better when you feel good about your fitness. This year, I swim with people that kick my ass every practice, do tempo runs with people like Nick
Best, and bike with cyclists that are 10 times better than I am. In fact, this week I ran with Nick, and felt as slow as I have felt in 2 years. I actually felt sorry for him. When we talked about it, he thought that we were going at a pretty decent pace, just as quick or quicker as in the past. I could be getting faster, but you wouldn't know it running with Nick, or swimming and biking with other people in my group.

All of this challenges the mental side of triathlon. The strongest can accept the humility and strive to one day be the best. The weak can't handle the crushed ego of stepping up a level. I hope I am the former.

Anyhow, I am taking one more full day off and hoping that I can be ready to roll next week. I had a bike fit last week and I am dying to get on it and test it out.

Shawnigan Lake - Race Report

2009-05-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

Shawnigan Lake is an awesome triathlon. I have done it every year since it began and it is crazy to see how far it has come. The Lifesport crew clearly know how to put on a professional triathlon. This year, there were three distances: Half IM, Olympic, and Sprint. Since I have already done the Half IM and Sprint races, I wanted to do the Olympic, in part to see where I am in my training so far this year.

One of the advantages of having a race run by Lifesport is the pro talent that comes out to this grass routes triathlon. If we were in any other place, it would be a huge deal to have Simon Whitfield, Brent McMahon, as well as other Olympians toeing the start line. Here, it's not even a big deal to look to your left and wave to arguably one of the greatest triathletes ever before your heat starts. Anyways, to my race.

I learned a lot this week. I always learn things after a race, but this weekend was more than usual. Hindsight is 20:20 and now I see what I should have done.

Swim: 24:04.
The swim went fairly well for the first open water of the season. The start was a little crazy, but I managed to tuck in behind 1 guy for most of the swim. I wasn't going 110% hard on the swim, but the draft was nice and the guy ahead was really good at sighting. Since I couldn't see a thing, I felt it was better to be able to follow his bubbles than try and forge ahead on my own. The swim was about 1.5 minutes slower than what I want to do in Australia, so there is definitely room for improvement. Also, my groin was bugging me pretty bad out of the swim, which has never happened before. I can only assume that this is due to the wetsuit. I think I came out of the water in 16th or so.Simon only beat me by 6 minutes ha!

Bike 1:15:18
After T1 I was in 12th place. I started to aggressively attack the bike. I wanted to make up ground on a lot of athletes. The groin was actually getting worse, and it was freaking me out. I have never really been injured since I started triathlon 5 years ago. I figured there was no choice but to just keep pushing it hard and hope that it would go away. (DNFing is not an option)
On the second lap of the bike the groin started to settle down a bit. Either I just stopped noticing the pain or it was going away, I'm not sure. After T2 I was 10th out on the run. That's pretty crazy when I look at the results. I only passed 2 people on the bike! Crazy

Run: 40:59
I was excited to get out on the run. The run is my wheelhouse. I was hoping to catch a lot of people. After the 1st km however, my back started to ache pretty bad. I can only guess that it is from the wetsuit as well, since I have never felt that before either. This extreme lower back soreness and stiffness made me feel a lot more tired that I probably was. I struggled out there. I was hitting 4 minute kms, which is considerably slower than my usual pace. I told myself that everyone was having this hard of time, and to just keep going as fast as possible.

I have always had problems with this run course. Although a beautiful track, the loose gravel slows me down pretty good. It's definitely something to work on. I posted the 6th fastest run of the day. Other than the top 4, the run times seemed pretty slow. I came in 5th overall and 3rd in my age group. Total Time was 1:22.59. If you factor in that the bike course was 4 km longer than a standard Olympic course. I would have finished in 1:15.30, which is roughly 4 minutes faster than last years PB.

I'm not going to lie, I am disappointed. To be slower than expected on two of the three disciplines is hardly a good day. Also, the back soreness and groin scared me. Here is what I need to work on for next time:

1) Do more back exercises to strengthen it up
2) Do at least 1 open water swim per week
3) Get a new bike fit, both for the back but also to optimize my running off the bike
4) Get my running back to form.
5) Stay out of the sun the day before

The one bright spot of the race was that my nutrition went pretty well. After the race we headed back down the island, as I had to work at 5:00. It was the worst shift ever. It was really busy and I was basically sleep walking the whole time.

The Recovery

2009-05-22T09:43:00.000-07:00

I think I am turning the corner on my cold. It started Wednesday, when I was feeling really lousy. I went to our swim practice not expecting anything special. I ended up having one of the best swims of the year. Holding 1:23 on the 100s and 2:54 on the 200s. Since then, every day I have woken up feeling better. I think the excessive amounts of Vitamin C and other supplements have helped me a lot.

This week has been a crazy taper. It isn't really supposed to be a taper, but a recovery week from three weeks of intense training. To give you an idea of the amount of taper it is, I did 16+hours of training last week, and only 8 hours this week. Still working out every day with the group, but shorter more intense stuff.

Since the race this weekend is put on by Lifesport, a lot of the group workouts have been race prep stuff, which is pretty cool. I don't think I have ever prepared more for a race since I started the sport!

Yesterday was a Brick outside in the beautiful weather, doing 2 x 10 minutes in race mode as our main set. Coach Paul on a mental tour around Shawnigan Lake as we did the set. How bout that for race prep ha! I felt pretty strong on the run off the bike. I feel a lot better than even 3 days ago.

One thing that hasn't gotten better is my sleeping. Reducing my workout load by 50% has made me a little crazy. Mentally I can handle it, since I know that I am sick and it's not in my best interest to workout a lot. But physically my body doesn't know what to do. I wake up in the middle of the night squirming around. I have tons of race dreams. Last night I had a nightmare that I was stuck behind the one train that crosses the course on Sunday and had to wait 5 minutes while my competition got away!

I need to relax.

Sick

2009-05-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

Well this week has been a TOTAL write-off! Here I was excited that I would have a solid week of training / tapering before the Shawnigan Tri, and all I have had is a nasty cold that has taken me through the classic stages (starting from sore throat to overall leakage of the nose and weakness). I started to develop the cold on Saturday night at work. By Sunday morning, I had to cut my bike ride short because I couldn't take the pain of swallowing my water anymore.

Monday was more of the same. I managed to make it out to my Masters group, but I only did 2 of the 3 reps in the Main Set. I was dragging some serious ass. I wish I went in a slower lane so that I wasn't noticeable, but I stuck out like a sore thumb in my usual lane, getting passed more often than not. After that I stumbled home and slept the day away.

Tuesday was a different stage of the cold. The overall weakness that I felt yesterday makes me wish that I did more workouts on Sunday and Monday, when at least I had some energy. I missed a short recovery swim in the morning, as I felt it would just do more harm than good. I made it out to the Sidney time trial in the evening. I was debating on whether or not to go, but I really wanted to move my legs and get out of the house for a bit, so I decided to give it a go.

I did an extra long warmup to get my legs as prepared as possible. I also got to the TT nice and early so that I could go first and get home as early as possible. Not much to report on the TT. I did it in 28:14, with my first positive split of the year. I pushed it as much as I could, but my throat and lungs felt raw, and my legs just didn't have the energy. I 20 minute cool down to the car and I went home.

Today I still feel pretty rotten. This cold better be gone by the weekend! I am pretty worried that even if the cold is gone by Sunday, my body will still be exhausted from fighting it all week.

Better head off to the pool....

Week's Numbs

2009-05-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

The numbers don't exactly reflect the effort this week, since the intervals don't really show distance, but here they are.

Actual Time	15:14
Planned Time	15:15
Hours from ATP	0:00

Swim Distance	11400 m
Bike Distance	130 km
Run Distance	44.13 km
Brick Distance	40 km

Heeeeyo

2009-05-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Last blog entry I said I was really tired. I don't think I even knew real tired when I wrote that!

This week has been the heaviest training load yet. Lots of workouts, but also lots of interval/hard/want to puke workouts as well. I threw lots of low intensity in there as well, so that I barely made it through the week. Although my swimming has been less than impressive, my other workouts have been going along well. Doing hill reps on the bike after a race and TT this week has left me tender. Doing tempo runs with Nick as well as others has left me tired.

This Saturday was the creme de la creme of ass kicking. After a crappy swim at Gordon Head Rec Centre, where I forgot my goggles and had to pass a 75 year old lady 45000 times doing the dog paddle in the fast lane, I headed to our group run at Elk/Beaver.

I was so tired and completely planning on dragging ass the whole workout. Then Coach Paul shows up. Then Coach Lance shows up. Then Lisa Mensink shows up. Then Brent McMahon shows up. I was obviously not going to have a crappy workout with three of the top coaches in triathlon, two pros and one Olympian at the workout. We were also doing 10 x 1km, which would not be easy on tired legs. I ended up giving the workout 150%. I managed to lower my km splits to 3:27 by #10, which I was really happy with considering the boys say that the km on the back of Elk lake is 5 seconds slow. After that we could all barely hobble back to the parking lot. The entire Lifesport crew took a dip in the lake after, which was pretty funny. It was basically one of those gut-check workouts that I will remember for a while.

Yesterday at work I came up with a pretty nasty sore throat, so I had to shorten my bike ride today due to my inability to swallow water. Next week is a recovery week and then the race! Hopefully I feel better by then.

La settimana dopo

2009-05-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

La settimana dopo (the week after) the Sooke triathlon has been trying. After the tri I went for a bike ride and an hour into it I got two flat tires. Like two at the same time! Must have been a bad patch of road. Thankfully a bus driver let me on and I made it back to my car without dishing some serious cash!

Monday was a much needed day off, in which I took my bike in to get two new tires. I got some gatorskins which I am told are very flat resistant. I am now paranoid of flat tires even though this was my first flat for 2 years. After shelling out well over a hundred bucks (tough for a student/graduate) I brought my bike home and stored it for the time trial the next day. Tuesday had a non-group swim (always the toughest) where I literally sank for an hour. I was doing 5 x 400m as the main set and was dragging ass. I was just proud that I finished it. My arms were still so sore from the race on the weekend and bartending that night. Later that night was the second time trial of the year. I was eager to not get disqualified this time, but I knew my legs still felt like blocks from Sunday. So 1.5 hours before the race I go to get my bike out of storage and I find that one of my new tires is flat. S$@t! I have 10 minutes to get it down to Fort St. Cycle before they close. After getting the new tire, I was extremely late and rushed to get down to Sidney in time. I just made it and got in a very quick warmup before I was lined up to start.

I gave it my all for those blessed 27 minutes and change. What was different from last week was that the cyclist in front of me was catch-able (word check?), so I was chasing him the entire way, making small ground. I finally caught him with about 7km to go. I ended up with 27:30 something, which was 10 seconds faster than last week. Not bad for some seriously hurting legs. I averaged 39.221 km/hr. Did a small cool down with coach Dan and headed home fast to the girlfriend.

Today was crazy. Due to time constraints, I had to get all my working out done before 1:30. The crazy part was that I had three workouts to do. 1 recovery bike ride, 1 hard Fartlek run, and 1 masters swim. I decided to go bike, run, swim. This was not a good idea. I had no time to eat anything in between these workouts. I made it fine until the swim. Coach Paul had us do a 1500m TT in 1 x 1000 and 1 x 500. Exactly the workout I didn't want to do. I needed to suffer through some 100s or something, but not a straight swim. I was fine for about 500m, swimming easy with the girl beside be. Then she just kept slipping away...... I bonked. I mean I really bonked. The go home and cry to your mommy bonk. I was never going to quit the workout, but I got embarrassingly (another amazing word) passed twice on the 1000m TT, and almost twice on the 500m TT.

This week has been tough post race. I gotta get back into the grove. I think a nice run in the am and brick in the pm will get me back on track. Till next time...

YEAAH

2009-05-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Just got the final results in for the Sooke Tri. I came 1st OA for the age-groupers!

http://www.sookespringtri.com/results/2009/age_group.htm

Look at those run times! Not one under 20 minutes. That shows the difficulty of the run course. Looking at the elite times, only three of the NTC guys ran under 20 minutes on the run!

With all of the elite and junior elite NTC folks there, I think I came 10th or 11th OA. Nice to see the hard work paying off.

Sooke Sprint Tri - Race Report

2009-05-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

I figured I should get this report out as soon as possible before I forget anything. I litteraly just got in the door 5 minutes ago, and I am still in my race suit.

I am always excited for the SSS triathlon. I'm not sure why, since it has to be one of the toughest sprint triathlons in BC. The bike course has one major climb, and once you get up it the course becomes an unrelenting spew of rolling hills to zap the legs. The run course is an out and back straight up a large hill, which does not feel good after the bike.

I arrived pretty early and after a solid warmup, I took my bike out on the run course to make sure I remember where each hill is. That is when I noticed that they had changed the course from last year. They still had the out and back up the large hill, but someone decided that wasn't enough so they added another 500m out and back up a similarily steep hill to warm us up before the main show. I appreciate that they are always tweaking to find the best course possible, but it is slightly annoying that because of this new hill, I really cannot compare my run time from last year to this year. Anyhow, back to the race.

The swim was great. I had 4 guys in my lane that swam basically the same pace as me. One guy in the lane was a little frustrating. I was settled in nicely behind him for the draft, and I accidentaly lightly touched his feet, which to him meant that I really wanted to pass. Not knocking the guy, since that is the polite thing to do, but that sent me out of the draft. Then this guy all of a sudden feels pretty fast (due to the draft), so he wants to pass me! I had to laugh! So I let him pass and just conserved energy behind him until the finish. I did the swim in 9:59, which is about 25 seconds faster than I was hoping for! I was going to be happy with a 1:30 pace, but I will definately take a 1:25.30 pace!!!!

I shot through transition. I think there was 3 guys ahead of me from my heat after the swim. I caught up to them pretty quickly on the bike. This is a new sensation for me! I have never been a very powerful biker, but today it seemed like I was passing guys fairly easily. After about 10k on the bike I was alone in front, and just concentrated on attacking the rollers and conserving energy. I finished the bike in 36:05, which is more than 4 minutes faster than last year!

I was first into T2, which was an exciting feeling. I headed out for the run with my legs feeling pretty tired from the bike. I usually do brick workouts, so I know how it is supposed to feel, and this wasn't it. I might have pushed it a little too hard on the bike, but o well, it's a sprint! The run starts with a slight downhill, and then proceeds to go up for about 700m to the new hill added this year. Boy it was tough going straight up right off the bike! I think it would have been a lot easier if I had had a km or so to loosen up before the climb. I focused on good form and held pretty steady over the major climb of the run. On the turnaround it looked like I had put even more time on the guys in my heat. After that it was just solid work to get to the finish line. I did the run in 20:30, which is obviously way slower than I usually do it in. I think it was about 90% due to the tough course, and 10% due to some sluggishness. I ran around that time last year, when the course didn't have this hill, so it's not as bad as it seems. I will be interested to see the times of the other runners. I put the elevation map of the run below. I wish it looked harder than this stupid graph, so I could use it as more of an excuse ha ha.

One of my goals was to get top 5 overall in this race. Unfortunatly, almost every NTC althlete was out today, so that probably didn't happen. I did take 1st in my age group, and I secretly take pride in the fact that no NTC woman beat me today! Looking at last years results, I would have come in 3rd OA, so the time I had in mind to get my goal was reached today. A whole 6 minutes faster than last year! Time to stretch and then go to work to suffer through 5 hours of pain!

Total Time: 1:06:35

Sidney Velo Disqualification - May 5

2009-05-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

"Hi, Mike. I regret to inform you that have been disqualified in the May 5, 2009 Sidney Velo time trial for riding to the left of one of the traffic cones at the corner of McTavish and Lochside. I appreciate that this was your first ride on this course, but there are no exceptions to this rule."

Larry Pommen
Secretary-Treasurer, Sidney Velo

Ha Ha O well next time I will stay inside the cones! I'm such a triathlete!

oops

2009-05-07T09:46:00.001-07:00

Forgot to mention that my avg speed for the TT was 38.87 km/hr. Had a nice 14.5 hour workday yesterday, which included 2 workouts (1 at 6 am and 1 and noon). Needless to say I am extremely tired today.

Cool

2009-05-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

After a break on Monday, yesterday was another double workout day. After a nice solid drill set swim at lunch (which included an impromptu race with one of my masters teammates), I headed out to the Sidney Velo Time Trials.

What a cool experience! I have to admit, cycling is the last of the three sports of which I have gotten into the specific community. I am pretty entrenched in the running community, I swim in a masters group, but I do not do any cycling workouts with "cyclists." There are a few reasons for this. First, I don't have a road bike, which is a big no-no for group cycling. Second, the strict rules of cycling groups kind of distract me. Last time I was in a group I was concentrating 100% on not breaking any rule of the pack, and not on my workout.

Anyhow, that being said, I went to the 18km TT with an open mind, and ready to get my ass kicked. I arrived at the start and did a quick warmup ( I tried to watch as much of the Canuck game as possible), and proceeded to the start line. Although the TTs are low key, it is pretty cool to line up at the start with someone holding your bike up and the guy counting down from 10. I was actually shaking I was so excited! I shot out of the start gate and gave it a pretty hard go for the first km. I knew I wasn't really warmed up, so I tried to get there as soon as possible. After about 5km the first cyclist passed me, but I wasn't too worried. I went out around 35km/hr into the wind, and was cruising at around 42-43 km/hr on the way back. I finished the first lap in 13:51, which I was happy with. I had no idea what to expect for this TT, so I was going to be happy with anything under 30 minutes. The second lap felt way better. I was warm and feeling good. The legs were burning but for 30 minutes I can handle just about anything. I got passed by coach Dan on this lap (who blazed through the TT with a time of around 25:30), who was the second and final person to pass me. I finished the second lap in 13:46, for a negative split. Total time was 27:37. We'll have to check later if I was DQ'd though, since my wheel locked up on one of the turns and I hit a pylon, which is an offense.

All in all it was a great experience. I will be hitting this workout every week now, as it is just an unparalleled intensity workout that is so good for the legs. This morning was a Fartlek run at 6:30 am, and I'm heading to the pool at noon.

A Hurting Week

2009-05-04T09:47:00.001-07:00

Since the TC 10k, my body has been pretty sore all around. I think it is due to my first full week of work since school has ended, which involves me being on my feet for at least 6 hours late at night, after a full day of training. Work is hardest on my feet. They have been feeling progressively worse each day. I have been trying really hard to stretch everything and keep ice close.

Monday was a nice swim with a main set of 36 x 50, which we were doing on 50 seconds. We were all thinking that it was a little too much rest, but that we were all tired from the TC and that we would concentrate on good form. Well after about 30 of them, we were all struggling to finish the 50s in 41-42 seconds! The entire set was only 2900m, so it was a nice recovery set.

Tuesday was a rest day for me. I got a nice massage and relaxed all day.

The Weds swim was a sort of breakthrough workout for me. Our main set was 20 x 100, and we were asked to go about 2 seconds per 100 faster than our goal race pace. My goal pace is 1:30, so I was hoping to hold 1:28s the entire way. I held 1:25 strong for the first 10, 1:26-1:27 for the next 5, and then around 1:27-1:28 for the last five. Pretty good for getting a massage the day before, which usually renders me useless the next day.

Thursday was a 1:45.00 brick. The main was 1 x 15mins of different cadence, 1 x 10mins of cad 85-95, and 1 x 5mins all out, with rest in between (these efforts are all at 90%). The run part was 10 x 90 secs on, 90 secs off. I couldn't get much out of my legs on the bike, but the run felt ok.

Fridays swim was a MS of 10 x 200m on 3:15.
Reps 1-5
Hit 2:50 on the first few, then settled in to 2:58-2:59
Reps 6-10
Started to get pretty fatigued, and was hitting 3:00-3:03 on the last few. I think the 13-15 seconds rest was getting to me by the end. I was completely demolished by the end!

Saturday was a TT in the pool, and I was pretty happy with it. After that, we had our Sat morning run with the legend Lucy Smith, who kicked our asses in a 5 x 1mile main set. She was not even going hard and was just jogging a 5:15 mile! Amazing.

Sunday was a 2.5 hour bike followed by 15 mins hard run off the bike, 15 mins ez. I was rolling down the road going about 40k/hr when this biker blew up to me, probably going around 45-47k/hr. It was my coach Dan! Clearly a super-biker. We rode together for a few kms and talked about my training. It was really nice. I love having a local coach that you can actually get to know! On the run, my foot started to kill me after about 12 minutes on the run, so I shut it down early. I was pretty worried, as I have never had a serious problem with my foot. I'm resting and icing all day today, in the hopes of making it better. Happy training!

April Numbs

2009-05-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

April Totals:

Swim: 48,900 m
Bike: 509.9 km
Run: 132.32 km
Brick: 210 km
Time: 54:36.00

TC 10k Race Report

2009-04-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

This has to be my quickest race report ever! I'm sitting at work right now waiting for my last table to leave, so I figured now would be a good time to write one.

Where do I start with this race? I don't think I could have prepared any worse for this race, and yet I was still so excited to run it. I had what was probably the heaviest training week of the year this week, including 6 bike workouts on top of my normal workouts. Also, I worked the night before until 10:00 pm, and was running around on my feet for 8 hours pouring drinks. I was tired! When I got home I had to make some dinner, since it was too busy to eat, which went against the specific advice from coach Dan to not go hungry at any time during the day before. I finally got to bed around 12:30.

Up at 6:00 am and I was pretty excited. I knew my legs didn't have their usual jump, but I was sure I could pull at least a PB out of the bag today. I headed down with my Dad and did a pretty solid warmup. I lined up at the start line and as usual, took a good look for my competition. As usual, coach Dan was there along with Gary and some others. I was wondering if this was the day I was going to take Dan....

The gun went off, and the runners shot out of a cannon! The pace was fast, but not too uncomfortable. My legs felt fantastic at this point, and I felt like I could run all day. This first km went by in 3:36, and Dan said that that was a good pace. After another km at the same pace, we headed downhill somewhat along Dallas Rd. I started to feel really good by this point, and started to put some distance on Dan and Gary, who I could hear behind me. At the turnaround, I was happy with the race so far, and was determined to just go hard the entire time.

At around 6km the wheels started to fall off a bit. Saying this, it was not the classic "go out too hard and die" meltdown. I was still feeling great mentally and cardio-y (what a word), but my legs just couldn't do it. They had just done too much this week, and I couldn't get another ounce of strength out of them. That km went by in 3:49, well over my goal pace. Km 7 was not much better, and I let some runners that should not have gotten away get away. I was actually laughing by this point, as I think that I am a pretty good pacer. Today however, it looked like I was an amature that commited the all-too-often error of going out too hard. Km 8 was definately faster than 7, due to the excitement of coming close to the finish. My legs were all but done, but I still pushed them as fast as they could go. I could actually feel how differently my legs were moving compared to earlier in the race when they weren't tired. It was fascinating. Down the home stretch and through the shoot in 36:44, good enough for a 1.5 minute PB.

I think what made me happiest about this race was the fact that I know that if I was well rested, I would have been at least 30 seconds faster than I was today. That puts me in the low 36s which is where I want to be at this point in the season.

My splits were:
3:36, 3:37, 3:34, 3:31, 3:41, 3:48, 3:45, 3:38, 3:42, 3:41

Little Update

2009-04-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

I have had some amazing workouts in the past little while. I have biked every day this week and have put in a whopping 240 km, which is pretty good considering that most of that distance is interval and hill reps. I had a good small running interval set with Nick this week, doing 5 x 90 sec hard, and enough warm up and cool down so that Nick can explain some more provincial politics to me.

Swimming has been going well also. Friday, we had the 50m pool out and instead of doing distance, Dan threw us for a loop and gave us a 3 x 10 min set where you had to increase your distance each interval. The second one was the hardest, but I went the farthest on the third one, so I was happy. I never swim well in a 50m pool! Friday saw a 2.5 hour bike with Chris, and we pushed and pulled eachother along the whole time, switching the lead. It was a windy one! At one point we were pedaling pretty hard and hitting a top speed of 25 km/hr! It was a bit demoralizing. This morning was an easy run and spin, in preperation for the TC 10k tomorrow. In another bit of good news, a co-worker heard I was running and offered to switch shifts so that I get off work at 10pm instead of 3am! Looks like I might have a good race afterall!

DONEEEEEEEEEEEE

2009-04-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am graduated!!!! Well, I have finished all of my exams and now just have to hand in my final copy of my thesis at the end of the month, but for all intensive purposes I am finished! I am soooo happy!
This last week has been epic in training and school. Of course I just happen to have the heaviest week in a while training wise when I have back to back finals and work (which I couldn't take off, since I have no money for rent). ButI am proud to say that I didn't miss a workout, although I did some at pretty strange times.

This past week has been way better for swimming. I have been putting in a good effort to get "in the zone" before I go to swim practice. My coach chuckled when I said this, but I can see a difference in performance depending on my pre-workout routine. Now, I try to get on the pool deck 15 minutes early just to get ready mentally. I hate just rushing through the change room and jumping in the pool. I prefer to treat it like it is a job.

The weekly numbers are :

Actual Time
14:07
Planned Time
14:25
Swim Distance
9700 m
Bike Distance
172 km
Run Distance
42 km
Brick Distance
40 km

Running has been rolling along. I don't know why, but it seems that the more I try and put emphasis on the other two disciplines, the better my running gets! I have been doing some good tempo stuff with Nick (who ran an amazing 33:03 at the Sun Run, which I am sure he is pissed that it wasn't at least 32:59 haha), as well as some great Beaver Lake Runs with the team. On Saturday, we did 8 x 1km and my splits were steady around 3:29-3:32, with my last km at 3:28. Dan wasn't feeling up for a duel that morning, and neither was I. I'm not really sure what the code is for that. We run at the exact same speed, and I'm not sure if it's proper running etiquite (who knows how to spell that!), to wait for him if he's not running his best, or to power along ahead. O well. I'm letting the new road biking rules I have learned get into my head (thanks Jen!).

Biking has been really good lately. All my rides have been outside, which have been amazing. I don't really look at the distance that I bike, since I could be doing hill repeats all day and have no mileage to show for it. Speaking of which, I had the best repeat session of the observatory yesterday. I put on some ACDC, which I have not listened to in like 5 years, and did 5 x 5min standing/seated climbing of the hill. I got up to the NRC building in 5 mins, which I was pretty happy about.

I am super excited for the TC 10k! I have not run a 10k road race yet this year, so I am eager to know where I stand. I know I will be faster, but how much? I would be happy to run 36:xx.

A dopo,

Update

2009-04-10T20:27:00.001-07:00

It has been a while since I last blogged. I have been crazy busy writing my thesis and studying for exams. I cannot wait until the summer when all I have to concentrate on is training! This last week has been trying at best on the workout front. My swims have been less than stellar, and it feels like everyone around me is getting better while I am still stuck. I have had a few feel-good run days, and a few nice workouts on the bike, but overall the last two weeks have not been that fun in terms of progress. This last week has been especially hard, as Dan has me on a severe recovery week. We have been steadily ramping it up and I definately agree that it was needed ( a few overuse injuries were making their way up my leg), but it is so hard to not workout, especially when I know my competition is. Two days this week without doing a thing! I actually had a nightmare that my competition beat me in a triathlon! Next week looks pretty juicy though, with tons of biking, running, and swimming! Sorry for the crappy update, but I am sitting outside a coffee shop at 8:30 at night and I am freezing.

Mj

Training Update

2009-03-31T12:04:00.000-07:00

Little bit of a delay in the blogging lately. I just handed in my Thesis, and I am currently working on no less than three projects due this week, so I will keep it short.

Not much new on the training front this week. I got my arse kicked in the bike workout on Tues night, and had a hard swim on Weds afternoon. Ithink we did 18 x 100 for our main set, and I held 1:27, which I am happy about. Followed that up with an easy 35 minute base run to get the legs feeling normal again. Thursday was an hour and a half bike with overgear intervals to toughen up the legs! Friday was a good swim with 10 x 100 and 18 x 50. The 50s hurt pretty bad by the end, but I was consistently hitting 1:27 and :36 for the 100s and 50s respectively. It felt good and hard, like it was supposed to!
The weekend was high mileage as usual. Saturday was a hard run at Elk Beaver with the legendary Lance Watson, who pushed me to almost puking intensity! The run was unusually long for an interval set, since we finished the intervals and found ourselves pretty far out from our cars! After that, it was off to the pool to do another speed session. Lots of 50s this week!

Sunday was a long bike with overgearing and aggressive hill climbing on the menu. My power is starting to get better on the bike, but it's still early. Follow that up with a seriously solid 45 min run with Nick. It was supposed to be a base run, but those who know Nick know that it is hard to keep it base when hes going fast! A few loops at Uvic and my week was over!

Can't wait for school to be done so I can train harder and longer!

Comox Valley Half Marathon - Race Report

2009-03-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

The comox half is really one of my favorite races of the VIRS. A slow uphill until the half way mark, and then downhill the whole way home, the course sets you up for a solid time every year.

Since my triathlon training has been really heavy, I had no plans for any kind of slight taper before the race. That was ok with me. I just love racing, and since I missed my interval workout this week, racing allows the legs to get a good ass kicking, while still being fun!

Other than being sick, I don't think I could have had a worse pre-race routine. I had two hard workouts on Saturday (including a 2.5 hr hilly bike), and worked Saturday night until 11:30 pm. I proceded to get to bed by about 12:30, and woke up at 6:30 to drive up to comox. I few timmys later, I was at the race ready to go! I was just happy to be there, and to get to run with my Dad, so I toed the start line in a good mental stage. I didn't really think of a goal time, but Jeff asked me in the lineup and I guessed that 1:21 would be pretty good for me.

This may sound silly, but I have improved so much from last year's times that I cannot really accurately guess my times this year. When the gun went off, I had a quick thought that today might not be as good as it could be. After all, I can't have every race be a PB in points and times.

The first few km went by nice and quick. For some reason, I was slightly dissapointed with kms of 3:45 and 3:42, don't ask my why. Guess I'm used to 5 and 8k races. As usual, I just concentrated on sticking with Gary and Simon for the first few kms. I am a slow starter, so it's nice to have Gary to keep me working hard at the start.

After the first 5km, Gary and I hit a nice pace. We let Simon go ahead of us, as he was looking super strong. When the uphills really started around 8km, our pace slowed to just over 4 minutes. I hated seeing a four minute km on my watch! But I knew we had to take the hills conservatively, and I trust Gary's pacing better than mine. At around 9km we suddenly caught up to Simon. I was secretely wondering what the hell happened to him, because all of a sudden he was running way slower than before. I was even more surprised at the turn-around to see him almost 400m back. Pretty strange to gain 400m in about a kilometer. On the downhill Gary and I started to increase the pace, and it felt really good. Almost too good, since once the road starts to flatten out again it feels like you are running really slow! Gary and I started to catch up to Sarah, who I assumed was the lead lady. It took us about 5 km to reel her in from about 200m ahead of us.

As we caught up to her, guess who showed up??? Simon! (see picture below of him stalking me from behind!) I was actually thinking to myself "wow that is the most unorthodox pacing style I have ever seen!" Again he looked so strong. I decided to try and tag along with him, since I felt like I could ramp up my game a little more in the final stretch. All of a sudden, Sarah decided that she didn't like her new company, and blew away from us. Simon attempted to catch up, but I think the pace was a little too hot for him as well. Both him and I got stuck in a bit of a no-mans land from km19-20. I could hear Gary catching up to me from behind, and I debated whether I should push to catch up to Simon, or drop back and run home with Gary. I decided to try for Simon. I seriousely have no idea how I caught up with Simon. He was running so strong, and I was in a sort of an unconcious state of mind where I wasn't even paying attention to the road. But with 200m to go, we were neck and neck and I became excited with the prospect of a sprint finish. One of my goals this year was to get in as many sprint finishes as possible to toughen me up for Worlds in september.

I find that the only way to start sprinting when you are hurting that much is to just start moving your legs wildly and your mind follows suit. Simon and I did the best sprint we could muster, although I laugh when I think of what we must have looked like to the spectators. We were trying so hard but I doubt we were going very fast! My last km was not exceptionally fast, even though it was my hardest working! Simon just took me at the line, and we both shared the feeling of a great finish and a great race!

I finished in 1:22.05, good enough for 24 OA and 1st in my age group. I was more excited at the 24st overall, since my age group was pretty diluted without the likes of Nick Best and others.

Still, that time is over 6 minutes faster than last year. Also my highest points total to date (732).

Monday Dan gave me a recovery day, which was nice. I could catch up on some of my thesis work. Today is a hard bike, which I am excited for!

Another cycle gone

2009-03-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

Another training cycle has come and gone....it's amazing how similar I feel at the beginning and end of each cycle!

After UBC, I had a really great week of training, which completed a 3 week buildup. My swims were going really well. In fact, last Friday I had one of the best swims of the season. I was keeping pace with a girl that I never would have dreamed of 2 months ago. Don't worry, she is still way better than me but the fact that I was even near her made me pretty happy. On the last interval of a 10 x 150m, 10 x 50m main set we had a pretty good race to the finish. It's funny how that happens. Neither of us said anything, but we knew we would go as hard as we could. Both of us shot off, flailing our arms as fast as possible. Of course she beat me, but it was nice to throw a bit of friendly competition into an otherwise dreary workout!

I have (or Dan has) been putting a greater emphasis on my bike lately, which is good. It's currently my weakest discipline, so some hard work will do me good. I had a rediculousely hard spin session on Tuesday. It was a Cadence workout which kills me everytime! I have the slowest legs.

Saturday was our usual interval run workout. I tell you, it was a tough one. 8 x 1k at 10-15 sec under 10k pace. Dan and I pushed ourselves as hard as possible (as usual), but our times were a little slow. It sure didn't feel like it! My heart rate got to 190, which is the highest I have seen it go in a while! Of course, the last km interval was an all out sprint to the finish. Dan and I had our usual sprint finish (if you have not read older posts, that is where I sprint ahead with about 50m to go, and then Dan catches up to me like I am walking with about 10m to go, where I then proceed to go Usain Bolt on him and beat him to the line ha ha).

That run was followed by a 1.5 hour bike, and a 3hr bike on sunday.

This week is a recovery week, and it sure feels like that! I'm exhausted every day (probably due to school as well), and have had lack-lustre workouts this week. Same thing happened to me at the end of my last mini-cycle, so I'm not too worried. Comox Half Marathon this weekend! Pray for some sunshine!

Mj

UBC Race Report

2009-03-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

The UBC tri came and went in a hurry this year. Considering I could only sign up for the short distance (yes shorter than a sprint), I had no plans for a taper. My distances were 400m, 12km,5km for the swim bike run. I basically was going to this race so that I could see how my running is coming along. A 400m swim doesn't even allow you to warm up, and the same for the bike, but a 5km run is sufficient to see how the legs respond coming out of T2.

I headed over the day before and stayed with a friend, sleeping on the couch. I had a very good sleep, so I was looking forward to the race the next morning. I definately miss racing! Running races are fun, but there is something extra special about a triathlon race! I got there nice and early just to soak it in.

I was a little late coming out of my warmup, so I basically walked right into the pool to start my swim. I was second to start, and I was excited to pump a good 400m warmup swim! The swim felt really good, other than the lane lines were impossible to go under (anyone in the outdoor pool knows what I am talking about). I finished the swim in about 5:30, but with the long transition run it came out something like 7:30.

Since my race was amazingly short, there was only time to put on a windbreaker for the bike. I could suffer through anything for 12km. The bike, true to form, was frieking freezing. Going down Marine Drive around 45km when it is 1 degree outside is not a good idea. My feet were completely frozen. On the way back, my legs started to seize a bit. There was nothing I could do. It's early in the season, and it was too cold to properly get in a groove. If I had done a longer distance, I'm sure I could have worked it out, but you just gotta go all out on a 12km bike (I feel silly even writing 12km bike!).

Then the main event started. Coming in off the bike, I was determined to lay down a solid run. My feet were numb, but after about 1km they were feeling slightly better. Right from the start I assaulted the run. My cadence was high, and my form felt great. First km went by in about 3:58, but it was all uphill and I wasn't too worried about it. Km 2 went by in about 3:29, and at the turn around I was still feeling awsome. The lungs were open and I was ripping along! The next two kms went by in 3:32, and 3:31. Coming into the final km, I was prepared for an all out assault on the finish line. Then, about 400m into it, I spotted the finish line and was thinking "uh oh, there is no way I could be that close!" The last km was ridiculousely short! I ran it in like 2:30, although I know I was going at about a 3:30 pace. The shortness pisses me off, since I had a great run, but finished with a 17:05 5km. That is clearly not my 5km race time! I'm upset because I know I would have had a PB, but I'm not about to start telling my running buddies that I ran a 17min 5km, because its not possible. I estimate that the course was about 300m short, and that I still would have ran it in well under 18min, which is great!

Overall the race went well. I came second overall in that distance, and won my age group. Can't get too excited, since most of my competition was in the other distances, but I'm still pleased. Well worth the ferry ride over, to see where I am at in my training and what I have to work on (BIKE!).

Post race I hopped on the trainer and rode for about an hour and half. More training news to come, including my new HOT YOGA experience!

Another Fantastic Update

2009-03-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

Here is the update on this week of training.

After last Saturday's hard workout, my legs were definitely feeling tender, which made my 3 hr ride on Sunday pretty painful. Actually, the ride itself felt nice and easy, but whenever I hit a slight uphill my legs were useless! I actually checked my rear brake a few times to make sure it wasn't hitting the wheel! I threw in a few Observatory climbs during the workout to spruce things up, and when it was all said and done, I had knocked off about 75km (with a few stops).

Monday was definitely a feel-good day. I jumped in with the UVic tri club after class and had a great workout. We were doing longer intervals that were intended to get us ready for the UBC triathlon this weekend. For the workout we had to jump in the pool every 5 seconds and swim up and down all the lanes (true UBC style). I swam in second position and felt amazing. I tried not to push the gal in front of me, but could have easily passed her if I wanted. We ended up doing the 200's in around 2:48, which felt very comfortable for me. It definitely was a change from the last time I swam with this group, which was about 3 weeks ago. I think others noticed my sudden improvement as well. Finished doing some other stuff and racked up about 3.2k that day.

Tuesday was a hard spin workout, in which I decided to go to the Lifesport workout for once. It was amazing! Too bad it is on the same day as the PIH workout, or I would be there all the time! Workout out on the pool deck was crazy! I must have lost about 3 litres of water I was sweating so hard! The workout was all about high cadence and I thought I was going to bounce off my seat!

Weds was a massive workout in the pool! The main set was 1 x 600 with 1' rest, followed by 6 x 100 HARD with 10 seconds rest, followed by an easier 4 x 50. We did that again as 1 x 400 then 4 x 100HARD, and 1 x 200 and 2 x 100 HARD, all with 4 x 50's to recover. About a 3k main set! I held my pace all the way through, and it felt wonderful. I pushed really hard at the end and fished my last hard 100 in 1:25, which I will definitely take with arms like jelly! I had the funniest character in my lane, who was swimming's equivalent of a sandbagger in golf! The guy swam so slow for the first 2.5 km of the MS, (including throwing some backstroke in there, as well as missing entire intervals!), and then in the last 2 x 100m he comes alive and starts to challenge us for the lead in the lane! It was so funny! The best part was when we finished the workout he has the gall to ask us if we slowed down near the end! Then he goes on to tell us that we must have gone out to hard!! I dunno, but last time I checked you should be tired by the end of a workout, not fresh as a Daisey!!! And triathletes do not bust out backstroke during a MS of freestyle buddy, sorry!

Second workout for the day was a nice 15k run at a steady clip, which felt great (did anything not feel great this week).

The mileage has been decreased a bit this week (probably due to the race on Sun), but I feel like I'm getting more out of my workouts, since I'm not just slugging through them.

Next stop is the UBC triathlon on Sunday! Forecast is for snow!!! Can't wait.

More Training....

2009-02-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

Well this week has been a really good week for me. After Calgary, I was getting a little nervous that I wasn't progressing as fast as I should be at this time of year. However, since I got home I have had atleast 4 breakthrough sessions this week!!! It must be the nice thick BC air! Tuesday was the usual PIH workout, where we did 1million x 200 repeats in a parloff relay. Gary and I rocked it, coming behind only Shane and his running partner! I really enjoy running with Gary, cause I know he thinks the same way about intervals as I do (ie lets suffer as much as possible to get better).

I felt so strong as a runner that night! It was great to get back into some sort of form! Our swim workout on Weds was a 1500m time trial, but was called something else to not scare us too much this early in the season! I started second in my lane, and after about 8 laps I was getting frustrated with the pace of the guy ahead of me, so I jumped ahead. What I didn't realize however, was that I was just enjoying the draft, and that was the reason I was feeling like I wasn't working as hard. As soon as I pushed ahead, I felt the full weight on the water! The guy I passed obviousely wasn't too impressed, so he stayed on my toes the entire way! I really didn't mind that much though. If it was in a race, I might have kicked a little harder, but I don't mind it when I know the people.

I finished in 23:32, which is about 2:30 to 3:00 faster than my PB last year!!! Good to see such improvements this early in the year. My splits were something like 8:11, 7:54, 7:11, so it was nice to see the negative splits!

Thursday was a "kick the crap out of you" swim, but again, if it makes me better, I'm not complaining! I was put in the fast lane (probably not due to me being fast at all, but so that my usualy lane was not as clogged up with people), and we had to do 20 x 100 repeats on 1:35, which should allow for about 10s rest. Well, I definately cannot hold that pace, so I knew I was in for it!!

For the first 12, I had about 8-10 seconds rest each repeat, but I was barely hanging on by the end, managing to get about 2 breaths by the 16-20 reps. I was proud however, that I did stay on 1:35, even if I almost passed out!! That was the kind of workout wherethat will ensure that I will get faster this year!!!

Today (Sat), we had our usual beaver lake run, where our MS was 4 x 1mile repeats. Sounds easy, but I assure you it was not. I told Dan that I was gonna push us hard today, and I immediately wished I didn't say that! Of course, on the final interval, we had an epic sprint to the line, where I shot off at about 100 yards to go, and then Dan caught up with me when I died with about 50 yards to go, and then I shot off again to take it! I needed about 5 minutes to make sure I wouldn't puke, but all in all it was a great run. Finished off with a 5:18 mile. More updates to come.

Training Update

2009-02-22T16:27:00.000-08:00

Here is the massive update on my training.

It has been going so well! I love training with Lifesport. Coach Dan has got a really good program going for me right now. I am swimming sooo much stronger thanks to swimming in the group. I cannot beleive that up to this year I have no swam with a group. It is so much harder and obviousely better for training. I can't wait to do a tri and see how much faster I do the swim. Basically I have been doing the same number of workouts/week as last year, but the intensity is just so much more. Having to explain yourself to a coach changes everything.

I was feeling amazing in the pool until this Wednesday, when I completely blew up. We were doing a main set that consisted of 4 x 50's followed quickly by a 400. After two of them, I completely lost it. I had been feeling sick before the workout, and I knew I was in for it. As I was saying, I felt like a brick in the water. The guy behind me that was not even a factor for the first two and the other workouts we have done was suddenly passing me. Not only passing me, but almost lapping me! I felt so bad, but I had to finish the workout. By that point, you are basically swimming backwards, but it is nice to have the group so that I can suffer through another 3k after that point!

After that workout I hopped on a plane, and am now in Calgary. Training in Calgary has been an experience to say the least. I have done 2 long runs in the snow, and they have been really tiring. I try to keep a high heartrate, but the altitude has taken a lot out of my lungs and I am struggling to get into a low tempo zone for my hr. The first 16k run included a lot of hills (aren't we on the prairies???) My knees were pretty tender after, due to running on the uneven packed snow. The second run included a run in (excuse the pun) with 3 coyotes!!!! I was really frieked out! I started to ponder how I would take down 3 coyotes, but luckily that event never happened!

The swims and bikes have been indoors and extremely boring. I can't wait till I go home and get to ride my own bike! !! It has been my largest training volume week yet, and I am exhausted. The family's patience is starting to wear a little thin with my extreme commitment to training, and I am starting to feel a little rediculous for asking to be taken to the rec centre for a 2 hour bike or swim. That being said, I am planning a 2.5hr bike and swim tomorrow before we fly home ha ha! More updates to come.

Cedar 12k Race Report

2009-02-22T16:18:00.001-08:00

The Cedar 12k is a classic race. With a tough uphill finish, this race is a good test of where one's fitness is at. Before the race I saw my coach Dan, who is near the same ability as me. I decided to amend my race goal to beating Gary or Dan, whichever one would make me happy ha! The race started but instead of the usual "kill yourself" 3' k, everyone actually settled into a pretty nice pace right off the bat. I decided to stick with the main pack of runners that included Gary and Dan, and for the next 3 km we just put it into cruise control. I think we started to slow down a bit too much for Gary's liking however, as he moved to the front and started to push the pace a little more. After that, most of the guys kicked it into gear and the pack split apart a bit.

Dan decided to go with the first pack that broke off, and Gary and I stayed back. They seemed to be going just a bit too hard to sustain. Still, it was hard to let Dan go that early in the race. Around 5km Bob Reid yelled out to Gary and I our times for the split, and I remember thinking "crap that is fast", but I wasn't worried because I felt amazing. I concentrated on shortening my stride, since I knew Gary would keep the same pace throughout the race. We hit the 8km marker around 30 minutes, which is not much slower than my pioneer 8k time. I still felt amazing, and I was starting to think I could actually beat Gary for the first time. Around 9km we started to hit the first of the final hills to the finish. I felt bad that I had basically tagged behind Gary for most of the run, so I decided to take the lead on the first hill. At the top of the hill, Gary started to slow, and I just held my pace expecting him to catch up. At that point, Lucy Smith told me that I wasn't that far back from Dan, so I decided to kick it up and try to get him.

It feels so much better chasing someone than being chased. If Dan was not ahead of me, I would have been concentrating on Gary behind me. But trying to chase Dan made me feel so good. I have never felt so strong at the end of a race. With 1k to go, I turned to look for Gary, but I couldn't see him. I couldn't beleive it! I ran through the tape in 45:42, slicing a solid 5 minutes of last year's time.

Pioneer 8k - Race Report

2009-01-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

Well the first race of the season is upon us! I have not exactly had ideal training conditions this winter (due to school), I was really excited and nervous about this race. Would I be faster than last year? Do I remember the intensity of racing? Could I keep up with the boys from TNW?

I was starting to think that I could just show up for workouts, but couldn't translate that success into racing success. Today would be the first test.

Lining up for the start line, I searched for Gary, who would act as a semi-pace bunny for me. I knew that I would probably not beat him (unless I had an almost perfect race), but I knew that staying close would all but guarantee my goal time of under 30 minutes.

The race started, and the pace was frantic. Gary bolted out of the gate, and I decided that I would follow, since I knew that if I let him go, I would not catch up to him later. As I followed him through a blistering 3:20 1st Km (ok not blistering to everybody, but for me), I heard a voice from behind. "MIIIIKE" the voice cautioned. Was it my mind telling me to slow down? Nope, it was Chris C, who knows how fast I run and knew I was pusing it! I settled into a more desirable pace (3:40), for the next few kms, and kept Gary within my sights.

I hit the halfway mark at 14:39, but knew that the second half is definately slower. I hurried my pace up a little, and at the 5km mark, my lungs started to feel a little more normal and relaxed. I pushed the pace a little until the 7km marker, in which the last km is just a brutal test of wills. The hills look small to an observer, but when you are at 95% of your max hr, they are like mountains.

I ran through the finish in a time of 29:48, which I was thrilled about. I was 15 seconds or so behind Gary, which thrilled me even more. This race proved that I have become a stronger runner (over 3 minutes better than last year), as well as that I can run with the main TNWers.

Sooke Half-Iron - Race Report

2008-09-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

The final triathlon of the season came and went, and I can honestly say that I am extremely happy with this year. I had reached all of my goals coming into the Sooke race, and I was looking forward to doing this last half-iron not worrying about a certain time of position. I just wanted to enjoy myself.

Since the start of school is always a crazy time, my training had been less than ideal coming into the race. I had managed to run a lot, but swimming had become increasingly difficult to accomodate, given my new time contraints with school. I got to the starting line knowing that I would be able to finish, but not expecting much more than that.

Swim
The swim was surprisingly nice. The water was warm, and just as the swim started the sun came up and filled the lake with a beautiful light. I drafted off a few people on each lap, and ended with a 34 minute swim, which is not much slower than my best swim. This shows the power of drafting.
I was so relaxed during the race that during T1, I was chatting the whole time with my dad (who did his first triathlon in the sprint portion). I managed to get out in about a minute, which was fine for me.

Bike
Wow the bike was freezing! I thought I might have to drop out at the start because I was so cold! 1 wet tri-suit and 11 degree temperatures is not pleasant! There was an enourmous hill on the bike that we had to climb 4 times, but I fancy myself a bit of a climber so I managed to pick lots of people off on this portion.

After 3 laps of the 4 lap bike, my legs started to feel it. I usually feel no discomfort on the bike, but today, I was ready to get off and start to run. I managed to enter T2 in 10th place, which was exciting.

Run
I immediately shot off on the run. I felt so good. It was warm. The sun was shining. It was a beautiful day for a run. I caught one of my buddies about 2 km into the 21.1km run, and finished the first 5km in about 22 minutes. Then came the hard part. The course was two laps of an out and back course, so each section was approximately 5km. You went 5km down to the water, then a gruelling 5km back up the kill, and then did the same thing all over again. The 5km up the hill ruined my legs, and I began to suffer. My stomach felt tight, I was thirsty but couldn't drink, and my legs felt like concrete. The worst part of all was that the turn around to start the second 10km was right in front of the finish line. It was torture to be so close to the finish line and start another 10km. I knew I would finish, but I didn't know it would be so painfull! The last 5 km of the run was ugly. I was reduced to a light jog, but still kept my position.

I ended up crossing the line in 13 place overall. (10th male) Obviousely the run was brudal for everyone. I was happy that I had the fortitude to finish, and celebrated after the race that I completed three half-iron distance triathlons this year, as well as 6 other distance tris.

It was a marvellous day to race, and I was especially happy to share the day with my dad, who completed his first tri, and experienced that magical feeling we all experienced on the day of our first race!

Nationals - Race Report

2008-08-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

I am back from Nationals after a great weekend in Kelowna.

I was really excited about this race, even though I did not plan on racing it this year. I made the BC team, and was granted free admission to the Apple Triathlon, which I could not pass up. Also, the top 10 in each age group get onto the Canadian National Age-Group team, which was very important to me (sort of a new mid-season goal I decided to make after being in Vancouver for the worlds). The timing of the race did not work well into my schedule, and I was not close to a peak phase in training. But still....free race!!

Since I am not a professional athlete, I had to work on the Friday before the race, which meant that we arrived in Kelowna around 12:30 am on Saturday morning. Not exactly an ideal travel strategy but hey, what can you do?

Saturday was one of the hottest days I have ever experienced, and since I had just arrived, I had to do a lot of "pre-race logistical" crap, which took a lot of time. Bike course tour, Package Pickup, Swim Course Practice, Pre-Race Meeting etc. I ended up being on my feet for 6 hours straight at midday heat. (including biking to and from my hotel 4 times to avoid the crazy traffic around the race site, I probably biked about 35k on Saturday!) I was really tired from all of the activities and turned in around 9:30 pm.

Race Morning- I think I slept for about 3 hours. Too excited. After body marking and chip pickup, I went to set up my transition area. Looking around at all of the other guys in my age group, I knew it was going to be a tall order to place in the top 10. These guys looked good! It was nearing time to race, so I headed down to the beach to warm up.

Swim-WOW! This swim was the craziest I have ever experienced. I imagine that it is similar to the IRONMAN experience. This was obviousely smaller, with 110 20-29 year-old guys beating the crap out of eachother. People were grabbing my arms, legs, and every other part. There were punches thrown and gloggles pulled, but we somehow made it around the first buoy. I felt pretty good on the swim, and exited in my usual time of around 26 minutes, which I will take considering I have not been doing the best workouts in the pool lately. A quick run up to T1 and onto the bike.

Bike- I had a great bike. I passed a lot fo the people that beat me in the swim, and ended up trading positions with the leader of the W25-29 group. It was bloody hot! I brought along a water bottle just to spray on my head, as it felt like there was a hair dryer blowing in my face the entire ride. I was feeling like I might be able to pull a PB out of the hat today, but later in the bike I could tell my legs were not their usual chipper selves. 1:07.00, 35.6 km/hr

Run - After the bike, I headed out to what I hoped would be a sub 42 min run. I am usually a sub 40 minute 10k runner, but I usually run in 22 Degrees, not 35. The first 5k loop felt good, and I kept pushing my body as fast as it could go. I was passing tons of age-groupers, but I could not find a person that was going slightly faster than me so that I could latch on for the ride. I think I ran the second loop faster, but I was not looking at my watch, since I knew by this time it was all guts and knowing my time would not make the slightest difference in my pace; I was already going as fast as I could go. With 1.5k to go, I launched my attack. I picked up the pace hard and passed some 20-24 males on the way in (our ages were written on our calves, so you could tell who was in your age group). I ran as hard as I could to the finish, and tried not to throw up. I ended the run in 44 minutes and change, which is uncharacteristically slow, but I felt like I ran it as hard as I possibly could.

I finished 8th in my age group and qualified for the team!!! So HAPPY! I know I could have done better if I had planned for this race, but I am happy to "get the job done" and qualify. Next year I will be ready for sure...

Self Transcendence- Race Report

2008-08-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

Well the Self-Transcendence triathlon is one of my favorite races for a reason. Always beautiful weather, and the course is unbeleivable. Having completed the course last year in 2:45.something, I was looking forward to seeing all of the hardwork I have put into my training over the last year.

Unfortunatly, my pre-race routine did not work out like I wanted. I arrived late, and had about 2 minutes of swimming practice before the siren went off.

The swim was one of the worst I have had in a while. I did not get into a pack of swimmers, and felt like I was in no man's land the entire way. I actually swam at a slower pace than my half-iron swims. After 26:43 of hell, I managed to get my wetsuit off fairly quickly, and off onto the bike.

The bike went a lot better, as I steadily clawed my way through the field. I fancy myself a bit of a climber, and take pride that I don't need any recovery after a tough hill. After averaging about 34 km/hr, I pushed the pace into T2, well ahead of last years time.

The run went fantastic. I felt good the whole time, and had lots of energy. As I regularily train at Elk lake, the trail felt familiar and comfortable. I found some good people to pace with, and finished the 10k in just over 40 minutes, which is pretty close to my PB at Elk Lake.

I finished the entire race in 2:18:59, which is almost 20 minutes faster than last year!!! I came 3rd in my division, behind Stephen Kilshaw and Scott Dagnall, not bad company!

Next stop is Kelowna