Itching to Race

So it's been exactly a month since my last race and I am feeling it! I had a few different races planned for this month but they both fell through. However, as much as I want to race - this has been a very consistent month of training and I'm starting to feel the fitness gains I've been looking for the past year.

As promised form my last post, here are my numbers from last week:

Swim: 2hr 40mins (6,100 yards)
Bike: 4hr 40 mins (90 miles)
Run: 4hr 10 mins (32 miles)

Total: 11hr 30 mins

This is with one day off and only 2 rides. I really want/need to get my riding up to 4 rides. The swim was so so and I was happy with my run totals. I'm going to try and start dialing in my run for the next month in preparation for the AFC 1/2 marathon. I am shooting for sub 1:15, but after these past two weeks I think I might be closer to 1:13...we'll see. I am SO much stronger/faster than I was when I ran my first 1/2 in Phoenix which was in January and I posted a 1:18:06.

I had another solid weekend of training too. Friday started with an hour long tempo run at 5am (talk about waking up the legs), and then Saturday I did a swim/bike brick with Matt. Over the past year I've noticed that I'm not as strong on the same bike after swimming hard. I'm sure a lot of that is lack of efficiency in the swim, but I always feel really winded and it takes awhile to get into a rhythm on the bike. So I'm going to try and work on swim/bike bricks to go along with my bike/run bricks. So Saturday we rode up to my HOA pool, put in about a mile and transitioned onto our bikes and off we went. The goal was to just chill and put in a few race pace efforts over a 53 mile course. I thought this was great 70.3 training (1.2 mile swim/56 mile bike). He took me on a pretty cool route that I'll be sure to do in the future. We put in about 3 different 20 min (above race pace efforts) towards the end of the ride. We ended up averaging around 28-30mph for those intervals, just taking turns with the lead. It was a lot of fun and I couldn't help but wonder how I were to feel if I put in a 13 mile run at the end. I was pleasantly suprised to see that we averaged over 20 mph for the whole ride with as many stop lights and pit stops we made.

The next day I met up with an old college teammate (Ricardo) to run up the Indian Truck Trails (just south of Corona - Cleveland Naitonal Park).  He took a little time off running too but was back at it full force and is trying to dip under 1:10 for a 1/2 this year. The plan was to go up 2500ft up the trail for about an hour and then just cruise back down. A little college background...I was coached by Irv Ray (now coaches for UCR) and pretty much every single weekend of the year (unless we were out of town) we ran up Mt. Baldy (and sometimes the Indian Truck Trail). For those of you that are unfamiliar, it's anywhere from 8-12 miles all uphill. So round trip, we're talking 16-24 miles for the day. The crazy part wasn't the distance and the climbing we did though, it was basically a race every single week. We would HAMMER. Probably not the smartest thing to do every week, but it sure made us strong and taught us how to hurt.

We just kept it at conversation pace the whole way up and tried to stay in control the whole time. My heart rate skyrocketed at first, but eventually it settled down. I was curious to see how the legs would react with this being my 3rd hard day in a row, but they actually started feeling stronger as the run progressed. We thought about putting in 16 for the day, but turned around to make it 12.5 instead. It's amazing what the landscape did as you climb 2500ft. It was a desert and a little warm and the bottom and then eventually it turned into pine trees with cool breezes near the top. I imagine you could easily get in 30+ miles up there. We went up about 6 and we could see switch backs up for miles. Looks like it would be fun on the mountain bike some day too.

All in all it was a great weekend with family and friends and a solid week of training. I'll leave you with a blog you have to read and a few photos:

Jesse Thomas - he won Wildflower earlier this year as a first year pro. He's one of the few true "runners" I've seen in blog land and he's a pretty funny dude. Seems like all the successful triathletes come from a swimming or biking background. Not this guy...and he also started late into triathlon after lots of time off, which I can relate with.

Green Tea IPA. Buy one! It's a Collaboration w/one of Stone's former brewer's.
They are moving off the shelves fast so I would get one quick. 9.2% and very good with sushi :)

This is pretty funny, because although you can't see it, we are reading "TRI Kids" magazine.
It comes as an insert with USA Triathlon Magazine and I showed it to her and she loved it.
She wanted that to be the bed time story that night. Start them early!!!