Palatine Twin Lakes Tri

Twin Lakes tri was this past Sunday 6/25. I took 4th overall and 1st in age group.  Perfect conditions with temps in the upper 50s at start.  I wore a wet suit despite warm water. Overall, I'm very happy with my race. Felt good even though my time was slower for every event compared to the last TL tri 2 years ago. My swim was 30 sec slower and my bike was 2 min slower and I was a little slower in T-1 and the run.  Overall, I was 3 minutes slower than 2 years ago.  I guess that's not too bad going from 57 to 59, but does this mean I'm getting 1.5 minutes slower at this distance every year?  That's depressing!

Next race coming up in 5 days: Twin Lakes. This is a small, low key event with a 700 yd swim, 14 mile bike and 5 mile run.  I'm feeling a bit over-trained despite not really training much last week. I did get in a 50 mile ride out to Johnson's mound on Sunday,but that was about the only hard w/o since the Batavia race.

Batavia Duathlon

I'm really happy with yesterday's race! I don't think I've felt this much pressure in a long while, but in the end, I squeaked out a win. That makes 7 years in a row that I've won my age group (one of those years was in the Triathlon, but the other 6 were in the Duathlon). 2011-2nd overall, 2012-5th overall, 2013-Tri-6th overall, 2014-3rd overall, 2015-won overall, 2016-2nd overall and 2017-4th overall. I've slowed down from year to year, but still hanging in there! This is the biggest win of my life- Mid East Regional Championship!  This was also the closest age group race for me. Bob Jones, who is always fast was right behind me every step of the 2nd run, but I hung on.
    I think that getting a sports watch and hiring a coach for the month of April was a key for me.  That got me thinking a lot more about pacing and training at higher intensities. My build up to this race was perfect: slow steady increase in distance and intensity with swimming in there to help take some of the stress off the running and biking musculosckeletal systems.  I also think that running the Batavia half-marathon in April was a key because it gave me confidence that I can still run fast and provided a great stimulus for my CV system while still giving me plenty of time to recover.  Then the week before this race I took in very easy. A 50 mile fairly hard ride on the Sunday before and then a 7 mile low-moderate intensity run on Monday and then really easy the rest of the week with only swimming (2K yards only) and very easy biking. On race day I felt rested and ready to go!
    In the race, I checked my watch early and often in the first run with the goal of running 6:15 and that is exactly what I ran (12:30 for the 2 miles).  Then I pushed hard on the bike and even began to get cramps toward the end.  Starting the 2nd run I had some calf cramps on both sides, but I took it very easy for the first mile (7:30 + min /mile pace), but then was able to pick it up as the cramps subsided. By the end of the run,  think I was back around 6:45/mile. I knew that Bob was right behind me on the run because I heard people cheering for him at the turn around, but I never looked back!    

Friday, June 9th.  Batavia triathlon and duathlon are in just two days.  I feel pretty good. Still very nervous that a bunch of really fast people are going to show up and kick my butt.  I have to be careful not to make my most common mistake: going out too fast.  This is especially problematic when there is a fast crowd at the front.  The good thing is that this year I have my Vivoactive and I can keep an eye on the pace and I won't have to wait until the 1 mile marker to see how fast I've been running.  My plan is to stay under 6:20 for the first mile and 6:15 for the second.  Will see how it goes!

Yikes, only 6 days to the race!  I've done this race at least half a dozen times and I'm still really nervous. No matter how well I've done in the past, I always feel like that doesn't matter and that I'm starting from scratch!  I can't assume anything and I could just fail miserably!  Also, I keep thinking that this is a regional championship and some really fast people are going to come out of the woodwork and kick my butt!  I've trained as hard as I've ever trained for a race (hopefully not too hard), so its not like I slacked off.  But the one difference is that this year all that training was in pain (right ham sting, hip and SI joint pain) and I'm definitely slower.  All I've got to do now is rest up, but I hope I can relax and stay calm this week....  

Training is going ok. 18 days until the Batavia Duathlon!  My hip and SI joint have felt a little better this weeks, but that may be because I haven't been running much.  I've only put in 12 miles in the last 2 weeks. Kind of scary given this race is coming up quick.  Will try and run some more in the last part of this week.  

Volunteered with Dare2Tri last night at Northerly Island Park in Chicago. What a beautiful night to be down at the lake: windy and warm looking out over the lake which appeared more like the ocean because of all the white caps.  All of the athletes and other volunteers were very nice and I think everyone enjoyed it.

5/17/17- Training is going ok. I decided not to do the Lemont Quary 10 miler this weekend and am focusing on the Batavia duathlon on June 11th.
 I had an X-ray taken of my low back, pelvis and hip due to the pain I've been having with running and biking. It showed a variety of abnormalities, some of which are likely congenital and some are likely chronic, degenerative changes.  The most significant was a spondylolesthesis at L5/S1 which is likely, at least in part, the cause of my left leg and hip pain. So, I'm going to try physical therapy starting next week.  Getting old sucks!  

I'm backing to self-coaching. Bummer! However, after working with Cheryl, I'm now trying to follow a more organized and planned-out schedule (rather than my usual, wake up, see what the day looks like and then decide what I FEEL like doing). I'm scheduling workouts on TrainingPeaks to spread out swimming, biking and running better and to be more consistent with swimming.

I'm excited because I re-did my 1K swim time trail yesterday and took 30 seconds off my time!  I did the test on April 7th and my time was  18:11. Then I did the test yesterday, May 4th, and my time was technically 17:50, but I forgot to stop the watch and when I looked at it after finishing it said 17:40. That's pretty good and not too far off from my best time for 1K over the last 10 years (17:10).  This weekend I would like to try to re-do the 30 minute distance bike trial and next week the 5K run trial to see if I'm improving.

5/1/17: Well, my one month of coaching is over for 2017!  Bummer, because it really helped me to boost my motivation, the intensity of my workouts and my confidence. I just hope I can keep up with the same high intensity swim sets. Although it was a big boost to my training, I'm not sure that I could take much more than a couple of months at that level before getting injured. It wasn't so much the swimming and biking as the running.  I've never been one to do a lot of running H.I.I.T. because every time I do, I develop some kind of injury.  Way back when I lived in Boston in the 80s I ran with the Boston Track Club and started doing intervals like 440s and 880s. Within a month I had problems. Then when I moved to Pasadena and did track w/os with the Pasadena Triathlon Club, same thing happened.  So maybe its good that I have 6 weeks till my first big race of the season and I can adjust my own training to keep it below the threshold of injury, but above the threshold for stimulating improvements in speed. My plan is to focus on swim speed and hard bike intervals, but avoid more than 10 minutes of high intensity running/week.  Hopefully the intensity with the other sports carries over to running!

USA Triathlon selects ET Batavia Duathlon as 2017 Regional Championship race

Duathlon has always been the illegitimate stepchild of triathlon, which is why I like it so much!  The races aren't that competitive and relative to triathlon, this allows a middle of the packer like me to be competitive.  But with this year's race in Batavia being named a regional qualifier, I have a feeling that people will come out of the woodwork. Guys I haven't seen in years and who I thought had died will probably show up healthier and faster than ever. Oh well... should be fun!