I'm Back... and sick!

It's been a awhile since my last post but let me bring you up to date on my past activities. The week of April 10th had me traveling to Calgary on business. The morning of April 9th I participated in the ParisAncaster Bike Race. It was quite the muddy ordeal as the pictures will attest. I finished but not without some bruises and scratches. At some point during one of my many spills I must of put a gash in my calf. I didn' notice until the completion of the race. Someone pointed to it and said you better get that looked at. I thought with all the riding through farmer fields and manure this would probably be a good idea. After the race I had to drive quickly home, shower and get to the airport for my flight to Calgary. I made sure that I was fully hydrated before getting onto the airplane but with the limited space that Air Canada provides I was quite confined in my seat. About 2 hours into the flight my legs began to cramp. It was difficult to try and stretch them out so I think the gentlemen in the seats beside me were starting to get annoyed with my many romps up and down the aisle. Although, the one passenger was a mountain biker from Calgary and he could sympathize. I also got some sympathy from the cute flight attendant as she kept on bringing me water.















































When I was in Calgary I was able to get in some pretty decent runs on Monday and Tuesday. It was nice to run with the backdrop of the mountains. Nothing to strenuous but wanted keep the legs moving while I was away. Everytime I venture out onto an airplane, which is typically once or twice a month I seem to always pick something up and get sick. No matter how hard I try to stay hydrated and try and do all the sanitary things (wash hands, etc) I seem to still get sick. This trip was no different. I started to feel quite ill on Thursday and by Friday I was in bed with a bad chest infection. This cancelled my group long run on Saturday and the long bike on Sunday. I also missed out on all the Easter festivities, so no bunnies for moi. I started to feel much better by Tuesday so I ventured out for an easy 30 minute run. Kept the pace slow and did 10x30sec pickups to keep the legs fresh.

Wednesday, April 19th

I decided to meet a group of fellow cyclist on Wednesday evening for a simulated Time Trial. Although I wasn't feeling 100% I thought it would be great to get use to the new bike in race conditions. Although the bike performed outstanding I in turn did not. I just averaged just under 30kph for the 15km T.T. I rode about 30 minutes beforehand to warm up and did another 60 minutes afterward. Overall it was a great workout with a couple of good climbs around the Niagara Escarpment. Even rode a bit of the Milton Triathlon bike route.

Goals - Continued

Swim

This has always been my weakest event. I remember some events where I had to do the backstroke to get through the swim. When I did the 1/2 Ironman it almost killed me. The one thing that I've learned over the last two years is that I have very poor technique. This year I've spend considerable amount of time trying to correct this. I've purchased the TI DVD and have begun to practice all the drills in each workout. In fact, sometimes I've just worked on the drills for the entire workout. I'm finally starting to see a difference. The one main component is the glide. I always use to start the catch to early in the stroke. Now, I really strive to drive my hand forward into the water just in front of my ear and rotate to the proper skating position. It's hard work learning to swim all over again but I'm hoping that it will payoff in the future. I'll never be a good swimmer but if I can be decent enough so that I don't have to spend 20 minutes on the bike getting my heartrate down, I think I'll be ahead of the game. I've checked some swim time for my age group (40-44) and noticed that range is somewhere in the 1:35 - 2:45/100m. My goal is to be in the middle around 2:00 - 2:10/100. I'd be quite happy with that.

Stay tuned... more to come.

Goals

I specifically wanted to speak about goals today. In the past few years I've gotten a little complacent in my training which in turn has hampered my improvement. Case in point. I happen to be cleaning up my PC files and noticed that I had quite a few of my old race results. In the past 3 years my times in each discipline haven't really improved. If you examine the paces for the swim, bike and run you'll notice that everything in each year is quite similar. So, how do I change this to improve for this coming year. I think that setting specific goals would be a good start. I watched a clip from the Science of Triathlon DVD and Wes Hobson was speaking specifically on Goal Setting. Two points that he made were interesting to me. One, "setting goals is the foundation of all your training" and "without goals your just spinning your wheels". This definitely sounds familiar. Two, "goals should be challenging yet achievable". I think that I need to be realistic on my time commitment and physical limitations and than decide on some specific goals. I know that I cannot physically ride a 40K TT in under 1 hour. I've done this in my younger days but physically I cannot achieve this. But, averaging 30K+ over 40K in a standard Olympic race is. In the next few days I'm going to publish some general goals and than focus in the coming weeks on more detailed goals.

Nutrition

I've always tried to eat properly but I still think that this area can need improving. My weight has been floating around 165lbs for the last 5 years or so but would live to lose that last 10 - 15lbs. So I'm starting to watch the calories and what I ingest at each meal. To help with this I'm going to try and take my lunch to work. Somewhat difficult in the corporate environment with business lunches and such but I'm going to give it a shot. I've calculated my calorie intake for each day and have a pretty good idea what I need to consume. I've already made some choices and have cut out the wine, beer and snack food from the menu. Also, I've drastically increased the amount of water per day to ensure that I'm always fully hydrated.

To be continued...