Training and racing update

Training has been good and bad since my last race two weeks ago. Going into my last race I had a calf injury that cropped up after I did some hard 200s on the track and then followed that up with a 10 mile run in racing flats a few days later. That doesn't work so well for me; I have to be careful with my running or I get these little injuries. I hate it! That's why always say I'm not a "real runner". I wish my body could hold up to my motivation. For race day I just loaded up on ibuprofen and a big dose of HTFU and did what I had to do to get the win.

My plan after the last short course race was to start my long course training geared toward the half ironman in late September and full ironman in November. So, I need to start bringing on the long run and built upon the previous week's 10 mile run with an 11.5 mile run and then last week tried to go for 12 but had to bag it after 10.5 because of the calf. That was last Tuesday and I haven't run since and my calf is finally feeling normal again. I'll start building my run volume tomorrow, much more methodically this time, and hope that I don't have any more issues with it before the long course races.

The cycling has been the total opposite. I've been banging out the miles like no tomorrow. Last week was over 10 hours of riding (that's a good bit for me) which included a 100 mile ride in under 5 hours with over 10,000 feet of climbing. The week before had a 66 mile ride / 5k run brick which went well. Between these last two long rides and the help of my team owner Paul Harrell, I think I have figured out my nutrition plan for the long course races later this year.

Swimming has been solid as well. I use it a lot of times for recovery and have been trying to get in the water 4-5 times a week and have been introducing some longer straight swims. I hope to get a long open water swim together soon with the FCA-E team.

So what's next on the race schedule? A pure points race ... Tri the Pee Dee. Right now, with only 4 races completed this season, I'm sitting in 2nd place in the Series Standings since one of my competitors already has 5 races (total points are based on your top 5 races added together). When I get one more race under my belt ... game over. So this next race is purely to put me on top of the rankings for the rest of the season, Lord willing. I'm interested in how I stack up against the Open division guys in this race as well.