Love the Hurt: Post Race R&R

My new favorite coffee cup!

So for a full week after Worlds, Flanny gave me one week of unstructured training. Basically do what I want when I want. It felt good to relax, not worry about training, drink some good beer, catch up on some things around the house and get in some really quality family time. It also gave me a chance to build a new website/blog that I've been working on which I'm hoping will launch next week. I'm pretty excited to share with all of you what it's going to be all about! Although I am kind of sad to see this blog go. I hit my 30,000th visitor this week which blows me away. My first post seemed like ages ago and when I look at some of the dumb things/posts I did over the years - I realize how much I've grown. The problem with a highly motivated new triathlete is - you're so naive! I've learned so much over the years and a lot of it came from blogs. I'm hoping that some of you learned and/or were inspired with this one and even more with the next.

It seems kind of fitting to end this blog with my last race being the World Championships. I devoted most of my posts and energy towards qualifying and doing well at that race. Although I didn't do as well as I had hoped, it was a great race for my "rookie debut" at a WC. On to bigger things now. With that big thing/goal being - to qualify for Kona now. I think there really is a HUGE difference in qualifying for Kona as opposed to 70.3 WC's. Basically it's the same format - top 1,2 sometimes 3 in your AG at a qualifying race. There's a few 70.3's where you can qualify but either way - expect stiff competition for that coveted Kona slot. There's most likely not going to be roll down slots all the way down to 10th++ place like you've seen a lot with the 70.3 WC slots. Way more competitive, way more time consuming, way longer race BUT that weak swim of mine shouldn't hurt me as much in a full. We'll see.

As far as the rest of this year is concerned. I'm 90% sure that I'm going to do Soma 70.3 this year. It's in late October and after DNFing in 2011 (my first HIM) and falling apart in the run last year - I have the urge to go back and try and execute. It's a fairly fast course (minus the swim) so I'm hoping to end the year with a PR and finally podium at that stinking race. So last week I gradually got my S,B,R arms and legs back in gear with the plan of doing a short build into this race and hopefully execute. My biggest weakness right now is experience so I figured I'd get another long course race under my belt and maybe even try a few things out (like eat and drink more). For now it's back to hitting it hard and what better time then to do that but in fall - my favorite time of year! Great weather, football, playoff baseball and Oktoberfest! Here's a some pics over the past few weeks. Cheers!

LINK to more Ironman 70.3 World Championship pictures if interested in seeing me suffer...