Love the Hurt: Catching up

First of all, thank you to everyone that gave me such nice/encouraging words/comments from last weeks post - means a lot!

Wife had me crack a rare smile on the trainer!

The past month or so has kind of gone by like a blur. I hurt the back of my knee a few days before SDIT so it took awhile to recover from that, but as of now I feel like I'm about 90% healed and back to the grind. Even with the little hiccup, right now - I'm no doubt the best triathlon shape that I've ever been. I know there's still big gains to be made in the upcoming build weeks and there's no doubt that Flanny has been bringing it with some serious workouts. Not since college have been I been a little intimidated by workouts. When I look at them on paper the week before, they seem very do-able. But then in his never-ending quest to make me fast with tired legs, the workouts become almost impossible by the time I get to them. I've learned to push through them, nail them (for the most part) and then the confidence skyrockets.

I had a huge epiphany this past month. It's pretty sad that it came this late in the ballgame - but I'm glad I finally realized it. As a 800/miler in college - the whole mindset was to practice extremely hard and then recover the next day or two then do it again over and over. Breakdown the muscles, rebuild, do it again. So we would always go into the hard workouts with pretty fresh legs. We would rarely do two hard days or even more so - three hard days in a row. And there really wasn't a need to - to much risk for injury.

Powerbar letting me train as hard as I do!

For triathlon - I've learned it's a whole different story. Since we are working three sports, there isn't that huge risk of injury like running has- so working out with tired legs is not only do-able but very important when you're talking about IM or 70.3's. I've still kind of clung onto that same mindset of hitting the hard workouts fresh (and fast), recovering and then doing it again. The problem with that is - it doesn't mimic what you get when you race. You're going to be hitting that bike leg with a lot of swim fatigue and even more so - when you hit that run, you're legs are going to be screaming. Not only training your body to preform at it's best in that state but also training your mind to be able to handle the pain that comes with it. I'm a big believer that pain tolerance differs from athlete to athlete. However, it can and should be trained just like anything else and you'll see improvement.

So Flanny has really taught me in the short time we've worked together on how to be fast when both your body and mind are completely fried. It is freaking brutal. Almost every single day there is some sort of intensity. There have been a few times where I reach out and let him know I'm freaking smoked but for the most part I've just been putting my head down and charging it. The best part? I've been seeing major gains. The numbers don't lie each week and I'm really excited to toe the line at Vegas.

Next week I'll be racing a local Olympic race - The Chula Vista Challenge. Typical 1500 meter bay swim, hilly 40k bike and a longer 6.5 mile trail run which should play to my strengths. Since this is such a critical time in my Vegas build, I'll just be training through it but still expect to see a PR even on the longer/harder course. It's only in it's second year as a race so it won't be as competitive as most San Diego triathlons but I'm pumped to race and get my feet a little wet before Vegas is here next month.

Here's a bunch of pics over the past month: