Running

I've been running! Over the winter break I've been getting in some consistent run training and my legs are holding up just fine...knock on wood! I'm about to switch over to a fresh pair of Newtons. My first pair are about to kick the bucket and I want to break in the new ones before I race the Phoenix Half Marathon on January 13th.

I completed a 1hr 15min run on Christmas day, what a present! I think I should be in good shape to complete the half marathon without injuring myself - a major goal for this race.

Speaking of Christmas presents, I was gifted an awesome waterPROOF helmet video camera. Expect to see death-defying descents and record breaking times down the sweetest roads Colorado has to offer*. Also, I may be updating underwater videos, if I ever find anything underwater worth sharing on video. The first video slated for production will be a sub-7 minute descent of Flagstaff Mtn.

The new helmet cam.

*Yellow-line rule in effect. No one is planning on getting hurt here.

500y Swim TT

I had a 500y swim TT this morning. It will serve as a benchmark to measure my progress in the upcoming months. I wasn't feeling great yesterday and thought I had a cold coming on. This morning I didn't feel much better. My time was 11 seconds off my PR, which isn't bad for this time of year. I still want to get a lot faster than last season.

Only 4 weeks until my first race of the season; PF Chang's Rock n' Roll Half Marathon in Phoenix, AZ. I guess I should pick up the running volume right about now...

Time to rest.

School, and Plenty of It

I've been so slammed with work the past few weeks. I haven't been able to train nearly as much as I want to, or should be. I'm almost done with one side project I'm doing for my Senior Design class. My team is building a super-high mileage car, for which we plan on using Zipp track disc wheels with disc brakes for the two front wheels. I designed and machined a set of hubs that we can use to practice driving the vehicle with so we don't mess up the Zipp wheels before competition in April.

This was my first major machining job, and I'm estimating it took me 16 hours to finish both hubs.

Back to Work

Alright, so I spent the past two months doing absolutely nothing. I exercised approximately 7 times and ate way more pizza and donuts than a person should ever attempt. My body fat % went up, but I dropped a couple pounds which means I lost a lot of muscle. I've been back training for 3 days now, so far so good. There will be a couple things different about this season...

I'm going to run year round! No more IT injuries, no more weeks off from running. I am going to run! To accomplish this I have a three-pronged approach: regular deep tissue massage to break up adhesions along my IT band, consistent weight training to correct muscle imbalances and tighten my core, and lots of yoga and stretching. Add in a little luck and I'll be a real running machine in no time!

In other news...my awesome carbon fiber fixie was stolen shortly after I got back from Worlds. Luckily, my renters insurance covered the loss and I was able to replace it with an equally sweet fixie. I even had enough money left over to buy myself a PowerTap, so I'll be biking with power readings now.


14.8lbs

The Season In Review

My season is over. I've been doing a lot of relaxing, kicking back, and letting loose lately. Since returning from Worlds I've worked out just as often as I've gone out to the bars, which is to say twice. I'm able to focus on school work a lot more and hopefully I'll get motivated soon to organize my room, my eating habits, and my weekly schedule so that when November 1st rolls around it will be easy to hop back into a full training load. My focus this winter will be to keep my legs healthy so I can get a full course of run base training in.

Highlights of this season:
- PRs for 500y open swim, 1.5k tri swim, 10k tri run, 5k tri run, 5k open run, Olympic tri
- Tied my PR for 40k tri bike
- PR for fastest avg. bike speed during a tri
- Won my last bike race as a Cat4 in a most glorious fashion, and the next day I...
- ...Met my goal for my first half marathon
- Moab training camp
- First time Mt. Evans ascent
- Perfect race at Age Group Nationals
- Going to Worlds in Hamburg with my buds
- Celebrating post-race in Hamburg with my buds

It was a good season. Coach Matt, thanks for helping me do it all!

Worlds

I had an excellent time in Hamburg, Germany for the ITU World Championships. The race itself was ok, not my best, but nothing to complain about. My swim was about 40 seconds slower than what I was shooting for, but I still came out of the water with all the US kids I normally run to T1 with. The run to T1 was about 400m so it added a good amount of time to my swim, but I think I came out of the water somewhere in between 20 and 21 minutes. I spent most of my time on the bike avoiding draft-packs, of which there was an abundance. It was really unfortunate to see all of the drafting going on, but I guess it's harder to avoid when there are so many closely matched racers on the course. Not having any real run training since mid July really put a damper on my run, but I still broke 40 minutes, so I am not too dissapointed. My IT band started hurting at 6k, but I didn't think twice about it.

I celebrated the end of my racing season with some of the best people (very talented athletes as well). The Age Group World Champion, Ben Collins, came out with us to celebrate his graduation to the pro ranks, effective that night at midnight. We ran into some American U23 and Elite athletes at a pub in the redlight district and had ourselves a good time. We stumbled back to our hotel at 2am and I packed in time to catch a cab to the airport at 4am. I was exhausted to say the least.

21:56 1500m swim (+400m run)
1:00:26 40k bike
39:12 10k run

44th in the 20-24 Age Group
134th overall







I just wanted to give a HUGE THANK YOU to all the people who helped me make it to Germany: Mom, Dad, Grammy, Matty, Gabe, the ENTIRE CU Tri Team, James, Joe and Dave Corman. Thank you all, it was an amazing experience!

Fresh Paint

Rudy Project, I hope you appreciate all the work that went into this.

5430 Long Course

Last Sunday was the 5430 "Half-Ironman" Long course race. My IT bands have really been acting up lately, and with Worlds just 3 weeks after the race I couldn't risk the injury running the half-marathon. Just for fun, I raced the swim and the bike, and then called it quits at T2. I had a great time, especially since I could go all-out on the bike and not worry about saving any energy for the run.

Before the race I wasn't really "in the mood" to put in a big effort. I didn't feel like swimming, and I hadn't prepared for the race in the days before. I was just going to go out, put in a hard effort, and call it a fun, hard training day. I positioned myself at the front and center of the swim start, and at the gun I took off and led my wave into the glare of the unknown. It was really sweet to have smooth, open water to swim in. I didn't worry about anyone drafting off me and just swam directly into the glare of the sun off the water. One by one I found the swim buoys, until finally I ran into the stragglers of the waves before me and had some splashes to follow. I just kept chugging along and came out of the water over a minute ahead of the next person in my age group.

I felt like crap, like always, on the run up to transition. I took my sweet time getting on the bike and let my legs warm up for a few miles before putting down the hammer. My buddy Josh caught me around mile 10 and I tried to stick with him, but he dropped me after another 10 miles. I finished the first 25 miles in 58:26! After 28 miles I knew I had gone out too hard, so my goal for the second half of the bike was to keep everything under control. Another buddy and tri-team cohort Dan caught me around mile 38. Instead of playing "leap frog" with him on the bike course I decided to do the conservative thing and just hung out behind him for the next 14 miles. It's really surprising how much of a benefit you get riding behind someone outside of the "drafting zone". Psychologically, pacing off someone in front of you makes the effort you're putting in seem a lot easier, and I'm pretty sure you can get a tangible draft riding 25 feet behind someone. With a few miles to go I put down everything I had and was determined to make my legs hurt. I mooned the 3rd bike aid station as I went by, I'm sure my friends volunteering there appreciated it. I came into T2, jogged my bike to the rack and caught my breath, cheered on a few friends as they trickled into transition and on to the run, then I went to work.

26:58 - 1.2 mile swim
2:15:53 - 56 mile bike

Excellent swim!
Pushing hard on the bike.

Boulder Peak

Boulder Peak Triathlon was over a week and a half ago, I just haven't gotten around to writing about it yet. My race was a little disappointing, but I finished the race and still had a fun time.

The start of the swim went directly into the sun. After the gun went off I stuck myself to the back of the lead group of 5 guys. We had a good 25m on the rest of the field within the first 500m. I kept trying to sight the turn buoy but couldn't see ANYTHING into the glare off the water. I looked to my side and saw a course buoy about 50m to our left and immediately panicked that we were going off course and had missed the turn. So I took a sharp turn and ditched my draft pack to try to get back on course, thinking the rest of them were going to swim for a while before they realized they were going the wrong way. As soon as I "got back on track" I turned and saw the turn buoy...directly in front of the lead pack. I ditched the lead pack for no reason at all, and I lost time swimming sideways. Needless to say, my swim sucked. I started the bike almost 2 minutes behind where I wanted to be, and kept it conservative for the first few miles out of transition knowing I had to get up and over Olde Stage. I conserved energy to the base of the climb, and when it came time to open up and give it everything I had, nothing was there. I felt like Hans Solo expecting to haul ass only to find out his hyperdrive was busted. I got through the bike and had an AWESOME T2, best I've ever had. After half a mile on the run I just fell apart. My form disappeared, my cadence slowed, and my IT band syndrome reared it's ugly head. By mile 2 I was in pain and knew I was going to have to settle for just crossing the finishing line. My trademark dying animal noises emerged from my mouth, my neck went slack, and my stride turned into a limp. I'm positive I resembled a zombie... With a half mile to go, my good buddy Matt caught up to me and paced me to the finish line.

Crawling up Olde Stage

Me on Mike's heels into T2

Matty and I heading to the finish.



I didn't do so hot in this race last year either. I think the placement of the race relative to my racing season may have something to do with it. It's just a few weeks after I peak for Age Group Nationals and it's right around when I start feeling burnt out. I've got the 5430 Half coming up in a little over a week, and I'm looking forward to finishing my first race at that distance. I've been contemplating what I would do if my IT band problems came back during the half marathon run. My strategies include; running backwards, skipping, and speed walking.

In other news, I had a great swim today. I had a 500y set at tempo pace, which I did in 6min flat, only 5 seconds off my 500 PR! If I had actually been gunning it I'm fairly sure I could have broken my PR. Pretty exciting.

Long Run, Long Ride

I'm beat. Over 8 hours of training in the past 2 days. On Friday I had a swim, followed by the longest run I have done to date; a whopping 2 hours in the mountains. My IT band took a beating and I'm afraid I'll have to pay extra close attention to them in the next week or so. Energy-wise I felt great during the entire run.

Mesa Trail run; elevation graph

Today I rode up to the peak of Mt. Evans at 14,100ft. I felt strong and largely unaffected by the altitude until crossing above 12,000ft. I felt as if I were bonking during the last 3 miles of the ascent . I had a headache, I was dizzy, my arms were tired and numb, and my legs had absolutely no power in them. After a quick photo-op at the top and a long, bumpy 26-mile descent back to our cars in Idaho Springs (7,800ft), I did a quick brick run. My IT bands were pretty much shot from the run yesterday, so I only got in half of the run time I wanted to. Now, my only goal for the rest of the day is to regain all the water weight I lost and eat salty food. In total, I burned over 5,000Kcal today and lost over 8lbs of water through dehydration. Not good. I guess 4 bottles of water on a 4 hour ride is NOT ENOUGH.

Mt. Evans ride; Elevation graph

Echo Lake


Approaching 12,000ft. Well above treeline.


Summit of Mt. Evans

Kentucky Fried Chicken sounds amazing right now...but - would I dare???

Age Group National Championships 2007

I had a great race. Great swim, great bike, awesome run. I set a 10k PR at 38:49 on a very challenging run course. The bike course was equally challenging, and the hills were not in my favor. I finished in 2:02:18 for 29th place overall, 6th place in the 20-24 age group. I qualified for both 2007 and 2008 World Championship races. I'll be going to the 2008 race in Vancouver, for sure, but I have to see if I can pull together the money to go to 2007 Worlds in Hamburg.

The splits;
19:28 1500m swim
1:01:56 40km bike
38:49 10km run






Male 20-24 Age Group results.


Overall results.


If you want the blow-by-blow, read on.

I started the swim right behind last years 20-24 age group winner, Ben Collins, in hopes of catching a free ride behind him for the swim. At the gun I was already about 3 body lengths behind him...scratch that idea. I jumped on the nearest pair of legs I could find and held on for dear life. I was in the top ten at this point of the swim, but I only lasted behind those legs to the halfway point. At the swim turn-around I got dropped and was in no man's land for a few hundred meters until a group of about 4 guys picked me up and I drafted off of them until we had about 200m to go, at which point I decided to veer off to take a more direct path to the finish. I ended up coming out of the water in 8th place, about 10 seconds ahead of that pack.

After a hectic T1 I hopped on my bike and didn't put my shoes on until after the crazy-steep hill directly out of transition. It took me a little while to get blood to my legs and in the mean time the pack of swimmers I had come out of the water ahead of started catching me. I found myself behind a strung-out line of about 6 guys. I would pass everyone on the downhills and flats, and then everyone would pass me on the hills. After the first 5km I broke ties and made some time on all but one kid, who I ended up "leap frogging" with for most of the bike. We were trading off for 2nd and 3rd place, but on a big hill with a few km to go he pulled ahead. I finished the bike in 3rd place, about 30 seconds behind 2nd.

I settled into a strong pace on the run, but the uphills were killing my quads and the downhills didn't feel any better. By the top of the first hill I had already been caught by one kid; knocked back to 4th place. I kept plugging away and actually felt like I was running fast, I was surprised. At the run turn-around I got a chance to see who was creeping up on me, and I was encouraged by the gaps I saw. About a kilometer after the turn-around another kid slowly closed in on me and passed; back to 5th place now. I kept him as close as possible, but I was starting to hurt at this point. My arms started to tingle and go numb, I'm guessing because all my blood was going to my legs. With two more hills to go I was struggling to keep the pace up and counting down the minutes for when I would finish. On the last hill before turning into the finishing chute I could barely get my legs to turn over. Another kid passed me and I had nothing left to follow him. I just crossed my fingers and hoped that no one else was closing in and I buckled down to the finish line, crossing safely in 6th place. It felt really good.

I want to give a little tribute to Charley French, the 80-99 age group champion. At 81, Charley finished in 3:03:32.
33:44 1500m swim
1:21:51 40km bike
1:03:06 10km run
...holy shit.

Taper to Nat's

Nationals is in 5 days and I've started my taper. I'm feeling strong, especially on the run. My goal for the next few days is to stay rested and relaxed. I'm looking forward to having my strongest performance to date! It's a really great feeling, knowing that each day I'm the fittest I've ever been in my life. I feel pretty mean and lean right now.

Thursday afternoon I fly out to Portland, OR. Saturday I race, Sunday I fly back. You'll be hearing how it goes for sure.


Hagg Lake, OR. Transition is on the tan part of the shoreline jutting out on the top left side of the lake. The bike course is two laps around the lake, and the run is an out-and-back along the bike course.

5430 Sprint

Yesterday was the 5430 Sprint Triathlon, the first of the three-race series in Boulder. The race was a "dress-rehearsal" for Age Group Nationals in 2 weeks, and just about everything went according to plan. My goals for the race were to place in the top 15 overall, break my previous stand alone bike TT time on the bike course (see my previous post on March 8th), and run faster than 6min/mile pace. I almost achieved every one of those goals, and I am very satisfied with the performance.

I finished 10th overall, my bike split was more than 3 minutes faster than what I did in March, and I ran 5 seconds off of a 6min/mile pace. I finished 3:28 behind the overall winner, but was 1:40 back from 2nd place. I blew up in the last kilometer of the run, but I still pulled off a solid run split (for my standards, at least).

10:37 800m swim + 150m run to transition
40:02 27.7km bike
18:41 5km run
_____________________
1:10:59

The only things that went wrong during this race;
-I really fumbled around getting into my bike shoes, and my shoe strap came completely undone so I had to wait until a downhill before I could "re-lace" the velcro.
-I started getting asthma on the run...I bet I sounded like a dying animal to the people around me.
-I blew up on the last bit of the run, and I had no kick whatsoever at the finish.
...otherwise I couldn't have asked for a better race.

The kid who won it this year raced a 1:10:50 in 2006. Does that mean there is a chance in hell that I, too, can take over 3 minutes off my time in one year? I sure as hell will try...



Exiting T1

Exiting T2

Yep, it hurt. At least I look cool with a sweet mullet.

I like the foot strike. I like the mullet.

Thanks for the photos, Matt!

Orthotics by Active Imprints

I went in to Active Imprints today for an appointment to get some custom running orthotics made. Owner Danny Abshire is one of the two co-founders of the Newton running shoe company. I have a set of orthotics already, but they give me very painful arch blisters when I run without socks, they are heavy, and they provide no forefoot correction. This is a problem because the goal with these spiffy new Newton running shoes is to get the runner to land on their forefoot, which would potentially negate any need for heel correction and increase need for forefoot correction.

I went in and was the only customer in the shop. After taking my foot imprint, the guy working in the shop that day, R.L., invited me in the back to watch him make the orthotics. Normally you have to wait a week or so for cutsom orthotics to come full circle, but at Active Imprints the whole thing took a whopping 30 minutes from start to finish! The new orthotics feel great and they weigh about half as much as my old ones. On top of this, the surface of the insole is made of a very smooth leather-like material that I'm guessing will cure my blister problems. I have a brick track workout tomorrow which should be a good test for the new orthotics.


Imprints of my feet were used as molds.


The molded material being glued up.


RL shaping the bottom and edges of the orthotics.


The finished product!


Damn, sucka! Look at that correction.

5k Run PR!

The Stroke N' Stride was cancelled today due to high winds. I went out to the Boulder Reservoir anyway to meet my coach and training buddies so we could still get in a hard workout. We decided to run the 5k course at race pace. This would be the first legitimate open 5k for me, as the previous open 5k I did in February was actually 4.6k. The course at "the res" is an out-and-back, so the stiff winds gave us a killer headwind on the way out and a nice tailwind on the way back.

I felt great running into the wind, really comfortable with the effort. On the way back I concentrated on landing with a forefoot strike and with as little time contacting the ground as possible. I kept my hips under me and my core tall, and let 'er rip! I finished in 17:46; 5:43-mile pace.

On Saturday I have an appointment to get new custom running orthotics. I can't wait!


I like this 5k course.

Holy Crap! Wind!

Taken from Weather.com:
"HIGH WIND WARNING: WEST WINDS OF 30 TO 50 MPH WILL DEVELOP IN THE FOOTHILLS AND OVER THE HIGHER TERRAIN EAST OF THE DIVIDE LATER THIS EVENING WITH GUSTS UP TO 90 MPH WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE MORNING HOURS ON THURSDAY. A FEW GUSTS COULD REACH 100 MPH OR MORE IN A FEW LOCATIONS."

I did the Lyons-Boulder TT tonight, starting at 7pm. The course goes directly North-to-South... coincidentally, the wind always comes from the West. I almost died about 20 times. By far, these were the worst wind conditions I have ever ridden in...and I had my 808s on the TT bike. Bad, bad recipe. I was surprised my pedals weren't clipping the road because I was leaning over so hard. I was afraid my wheels were going to loose traction, my helmet threatened to get sucked off my head, and my cheeks were becoming inflated just like you see in skydiving videos. Hitting little cracks in the road bounced my front wheel up just enough that at times it got picked up by the crosswind and thrown over a few inches.

The last time I did this TT I had no TT goodies (helmet, wheels, suit, booties, etc) and it was cold and raining. This time around I pulled out all the stops and went full aero; my time was about 1.5 minutes slower!

I passed a friend during the TT and he said I was leaning so far over that I looked like a downhill racer going into a banked corner.

I'm glad that's over. Whew!

Pelican Fest

It was a great day at the Pelican Festival in Windsor, CO. Good weather, crisp air, hot air balloons, and a strong man competition. Oh, and a triathlon. The Pelican Fest Triathlon included an 800m swim, 10mi bike, and a "5k" run.

The swim was the most rough-and-tumble I have experienced, which is very surprising considering how small the race was (~300 racers). I kept bumping into people, getting dunked, kicked, and smacked the entire time. I came out of the water somewhere in the top 5 of my wave; a couple 15-year olds beat me out of the water...jerks ;-)

After a little traffic jam in T1 I was cruising on the bike course. I felt really powerful on the bike and my new Garneau TT helmet had an excellent maiden voyage. Despite starting in the second wave, I caught all but two people by the time I came to T2. My feet were completely numb and I fumbled a little bit while putting my shoes on.

The beginning of the run included 2 incredibly steep hills, all of which I hobbled up. My calf was still sore from the half-marathon a week ago, and the climbing today made it feel as if I was about to pull a muslce with every step. After careening down each of the hills, I settled into a good pace on the flat section of the run course. For the first time I felt comfortable pushing hard on the run. Unfortunately, the run was really short. My time was 16:44...I'd like to say I can run a 16:44 5k, but...no. The run was approximately 4.4km, according to gmaps-pedometer, which means my actual 5k time would have been a shade under 19 minutes. Not bad for such a hilly course, but it's a far cry from 16:44.

The splits:
9:35 800m swim
24:27 10mi bike ~400ft of climbing
16:44 5k run (4.4k actual) ~250ft of climbing over two short hills.

52:22, 4th place overall, 1st place M20-24 age group.




"No one touches athletes when they have PMS."

It's 4:40am, I'm eating oatmeal like it's my job, I have a race to do in 3hrs 20min, and there have been 666 visitors to my training blog. Rock n' roll, baby!

2 Days, 2 Races

Sorry for the leave of absence. Final exams were taking up all of my time and I didn't really have much to write about in terms of racing or training. This weekend I finally got back into the swing of things with a bike race on Saturday and a running race on Sunday.

Saturday's race was the North Boulder Criterium, put on by the shop I work at, Excel Sports. It's the oldest and biggest bike race in Boulder, and it used to be a stage in the Red Zinger Classic, at one point the biggest stage race in America with competitors such as Lemond, Hinault, and the Russian Olympic cycling squad.

http://www.boulderbikerace.com/nbp/

I got my Cat3 upgrade this past Tuesday, but I couldn't make the late afternoon start time of the Cat3 race so I asked permission to join the Cat4s one last time. The race started at 9:45am with about 60 guys. Each time a prime came around I went off the front halfway through the lap and took the prize without any fight from the other racers. On the bell for the third and final prime I saw some strong looking guys move to the front at the base of the only "hill" on the course, so I followed them up to the front and urged them to make a break with me. I pushed a little bit to initiate a gap away from the pack, and when I looked back I was alone. I decided to keep going to win the prime. Once I crossed the line I looked back and had a sizeable gap, so I did the dumb thing that never works and kept pushing. Now I'm 10 seconds off the front of the pack with 20 minutes left to go in the crit and I'm trying to convince myself that I'll stay away. Taking care to pace myself, I keep plugging away and the gap starts to grow. I look back with 15 minutes to go and there is a small chase group of 4 trying to bridge up. With the call for 5 laps to go I look back and there are only 2 chasing, but they haven't gained any time. SO, I just kept on keepin' on and I ended up winning the race off the solo break. It was the perfect way to say farewell to the damn Cat4s. The time for me to upgrade has been long past due, I felt a little guilty for taking all 3 primes AND the win. I went home with 2 tubs of Endurox, 1 tub of Accelerade, 3 bike computers, and $65. Cat3s, hang on to your butts!

Start of the Cat4 North Boulder Criterium


Backside of the course. I'm behind the kid in white and maroon.


Throwing caution into the wind. You can see the chase trying to bridge up in the backgound.


Bell lap. If you look closely you can see the 2-man chase group behind the median.


Sweet sweet glory. That's not a fist pump, I was about to wipe my nose...

On Sunday I ran the Colfax Half Marathon. Besides being at 5,000ft+ altitude, the course has 670ft of climbing. This was supposed to be a training race to help get me ready for the Half-Ironmans I plan to do later in the summer. All I wanted to do was to finish, but breaking 1:30 was the goal in the back of my head. I had no idea how realistic the goal was. The longest I had ever run before this race was a whopping 12 miles. At the start of the race I took it easy, then I picked up the pace from mile 5 to 9, and on mile 9 the hills came and my legs started screaming. I kept at it and crossed the line in 1:29:28. I achieved my goal but it came down to the wire. I'm quite happy with the run performance, especially when taking into account the effort I had put on the bike the day before.


Me and my buds after finishing the half marathon!

Next race will be the Pelican Fest Sprint Triathlon in Windsor, CO. I'm looking forward to a short, fast race!

Put the "Geek" back in Tri-Geek

Alright, everyone knows triathletes are a socially inept and helplessly self-involved breed of people. On top of this, they are usually looking for that "magic bullet" solution to drop their PR. Just look at the products marketed towards triathletes; Rotor Cranks, Optygen capsules, wetsuits, TT bikes, aero bottles...you name it, triathletes have tried it. Thus the name "Tri-Geek".

I just fell in line with the rest of the Tri-Geeks today, and I couldn't be more excited about my new magic bullet.

Newton Running shoes came out about a month ago and ever since I've been dying to try on a pair. Tonight the co-founder Danny Abshire invited the CU Tri Team over after-hours to talk about the shoes and offer us a discount. I was sold on the shoes before I stepped in the door, and after running a mere hundred meters in them my credit card was flying to the register. They promote a forefoot strike and offer a higher energy return per stride than regular foam-sole running shoes. They claim to take off 10-20 seconds per mile depending on how fast you're running. The faster you run, the more noticeable the higher energy return is.

www.newtonrunning.com


My new shoes and free schwag! No, I did not mess with the color saturation.

There Went Everything

2:02:52. 37th place.

I did accomplish my two main goals; I broke 20 min on the swim and 40 min on the run. I had a hard time on the bike, so I had to back off the gas a little in order to save my run. It worked for the most part. There was nothing catastrophic about the race, no cramps, blisters, mechanical failures, etc. I didn't get the result I was looking for, but that just means I'll have to get faster!

My splits were;
18:42 swim
1:02:35 bike
39:23 run

Looking at the long term, I'd say I need to focus on my run. I had a bad day on the bike, normally it is by far my strength. The swim was good, I don't think I'll be making leaps and bounds in that area. However, I think I can take a good 4 minutes off my run time.

Before I get ahead of myself, it's time to hunker down and get ready for final exams and get as much rest as possible. I'm worn out!

Here Goes Everything

I'm packed, I'm rested, I'm ready to go. All that's left to do is swim 1.5k, bike 40k, and run 10k as fast as I can. Not too bad. Right now the hardest thing I'm facing is keeping my cool and staying relaxed in the days before the race. I feel like I have a constant adrenaline rush, which tends to wear me out. I leave tomorrow at 4:00am and 14 hours later I will arrive at the hotel in Tuscaloosa, 7:00pm.

Deep breaths.




I get to have lunch with my mom on the way to Tuscaloosa because I conveniently have a 3 hour layover in Houston.


The race course in Tuscaloosa.