It's the weekend

YAY!!!! Here's what I have planned:

A few hours on the road bike

Some running

Some celebrating my birthday!

It been great getting back into training lately. My coach is awesome and has done a great job of maximizing every minute of my available training time! This week will have somewhere around 16 hours of training (when you add in a few hours of strength work). I'm sooooo happy to be running again pain free!! Never again will I have ITB - I've learned my lesson and will keep my strength in balance and stay flexible.

Swimming has been going well but also kicking my butt. When I add in my swim from last Sunday, I've swam 12,500 meters in my last five session over the past 6 days. I was struggling to get through my cool down set today!? The suffering is okay by me because I am feeling my swim fitness getting elevated.

I'm registered for a few races for next year. I'll do the B2B full again which I consider a "practice" ironman and will be my "A" race of the year. The long term goal is to qualify for the World Championship in 2010. To do this I need to be able to go sub 9:30 on a flat course (somewhat slower on a hilly course). I think that is a stretch for 2009 so we will use this year to learn the distance better and get faster before I attempt to qualify the following year. As part of the preparation for the B2B I will do the 70.3 race in Augusta. I decided to go with this one instead of the SC Half based on the advice of my coach with the premise that 6 weeks between the races is better than 5. This will give us 2 hard weeks after the half ahead of a 4 week taper. I really want to go 4:30 or below at the half.

Like last year, I intended to get enough series points to win my age group in the SCTS in the first half of the year (March - June). That is unless I decided to get my rear handed to me in the Open division. I have a few running races coming up that should help me make this decision ...

Have a great weekend everyone and GOOD LUCK to all you studly people racing Kiawa this weekend!!!!