Better, Stronger, Faster, .... And Older
In my own little world, in which I fully rule in every way, my season officially starts on Monday. Not sure what that means exactly but I have some events lined up and need to start my fat ass a trainin' on Monday. Fer reals.
In this my 3rd season of Holy Triathlon Wonderment, I'm focusing a solid run and swim base and will gradually add the bike in over the next 3 months. No coach Marty until maybe late March or April due to finances. But the bulk of events are late summer so we should be good. The first year I was with him we started in April and it worked out pretty well. The first time I met him, he looked at me like some fat dork who was never going to get anywhere in tri. That worked out well also as I'm always mucho inspired to prove people wrong.
I'm starting with WildFlower and the bulk of the SVE TT series. Just for fun.... or maybe not. I say that knowing I always have fun, but if I'm still fat and slow, it's a great excuse for early season embarrassments. :)
Surgery Anyone?
So as you may know we had a baby. He's just over three months old now and about two weeks after he was born, I woke up with a swollen left knee. It cost me a good 6 weeks of training, which I didn't have time for anyway. On top of that I needed to have minor surgery on both legs. One three weeks ago and one last Tuesday. So I've been laid up for a while but in between those two procedures I managed to put in a 30 mile week with a good speed workout where I hit 4 consecutive sub :60 400's. The entire week felt like I was at 110%. The time off has really done wonders for me physically and mentally and I'm ready to roll back into training. I'm not sure my wife and son are so I'm trying minimize it and give the utmost attention.
So what shall I do with my time?
Notice the big tree to the right-->
On most of my morning runs in Henry Cowell I run around this monster. I can go in front or around, I always run around out of respect. That thing was 500 years old before the baby Jesus hit the manger. So I do it our of respect. I guess if you live in Santa Cruz long enough, some of that hippy juice sticks to you.
So yeah lots of trail runs and hopefully lots of group runs. My last was a month or so ago at Nissene Marks. Saw probably 15 friends out there. Rich, Aimee, Martin, Aaron, and the list goes on....
It ended up being about 10 miles (9.67 per the Garmin Gods) at a good clip. I ended up at about a 7:20 pace which wasn't at all what I'd expected to do. I'd been doing a lot of faster 5 to 6 milers prior and just didn't think I had it in me at that point. The first half was a nice pace
with a lot of talking. A good warmup for the old ratchet knee.
but after the turnaround, I hammered it home in the rain and it felt great. There's just nothing like a good fast run in the rain and slop to clear you head, and your lungs. It just puts nature into perspective. I did think to myself, "what the hell am I doing out here in the rain at 9am on Sunday morning?" Most people are sleeping or at church, but that is my Church.
The long road....
SO it looks like a nice long road back to where I was last season, let alone being better and faster. I need to lose about 12 lbs, run a sub 0:2:00 800m, and cut a good 2 minutes of of my 5k pr. No problem.
Better, Stronger, Faster, and Older.
