Building a Road Map

I’ve recently been looking over some of my old training data and trying to apply it to training for three sports instead of one (swim/bike/run).  I thought it might be a fun idea to share a little bit about how I track my training/racing.

TrainingPeaks.com

TrainingPeaks.com is an awesome resource for tracking training and metric data.  One that I’ve been using for a long time in conjunction with WKO+.  Thankfully, both utilities work incredibly well with triathlon.  Essentially, TrainingPeaks.com allows you to both plan workouts and then go back and analyze data as well as gauge fitness.  This includes things like power/heart rate data, GPS, and your own personal description of the workout.  You can track race data as well, but it’s not quite as robust as it should be.  The main issue is handling multisport files.

Under the Knife

Wow!  What a crazy day Monday was.  For those unaware, several months ago I was involved in a bike accident that ended my cycling career, but spurred my entry into triathlon.  Unfortunately, part of that accident was a chip of bone floating around in my wrist, cause excruciating pain whenever I move it.  Well, on Monday the doctor removed it!  It was quite the process, although not particularly exciting.  I’ll be out of the pool for a couple of weeks, but, once everything is healed, I’ll be back to doing a poor dolphin impression in no time!  After I cam out of the anastesia, I was a mess though!  Apparently, all I could talk about was my wife’s pregnancy as well as this website!  I was very adamant that the nurses visit my little corner of the internet.

First Race

I’ve scheduled my first race and it’s going to be the 5430 Sprint Triathlon in Boulder.  My form, so far, is coming along nicely to the point where I think I will be in contention for a top 10 overall or better.  The biggest question mark for me, at this point, is the swim.  My plan of attack is to continue to work on my form as well as get some more solid endurance swim sets in.  Additionally, I plan on going to a few Master’s swim sessions to gain a little more top end speed.

A New Set of Goals for 2012

With my departure from road racing, I’ve had to scramble to come up with some new goals for my budding triathlon career (I use that term loosely).  Why am I posting them like this in a public forum?  Easy.  If I make them public, then I can’t hide from them later.  Now, when someone asks me if I am a 5:40 runner, I can’t say, “I’m really only shooting for 6:00”.  I have to be accountable about where I am.  This also has the added side effect of ensuring that *I* can’t fool myself into thinking that I’m hot stuff when I’m really not (or am hotter than expected)!

The Pain Cave

There’s been a lot of change in my life the last couple of weeks.  Not only have I converted full-time to triathlon, changed my bike fit and moved to a new apartment.  The first order of business has been finding appropriate training routes, which has been difficult given the new suburban area I now live.  All is not lost though, this new-found challenge has given me motivation to try something new in my training.  Trainer work!

Getting in the Groove

Well, my second week of triathlon training is now behind me and I’ve made some solid progress.  The hours this week are still light due to me wanting to properly acclimate my body to running and swimming.  The last thing I need is another injury.  Actually, this transition has been easier than I anticipated, but that may just be the honeymoon period.  In the coming weeks I’ll have my racing schedule ready to be revealed, but, until then, you’ll just have to imagine what my racing plans will be!

I have had a couple of major lessons learned and they were both in the realm of recovery.  Firstly, I learned that I need to spread my sessions out more.  I struggled through a couple of FTP session on the bike because I was still exhausted from my swim.  I’m still so new to swimming that any session I do is an intense one because I have only one speed (fast).  As I progress, I suspect this will be less and less of a problem.  The second lesson has been in overall food intake.  I’m struggling to keep my weight up due to the increased training loads of the three sports.  Normally, I sit comfortably at around 143, but I’ve dipped down to 139, which is too low.  With the added upper body mass of swimming, I’d like to see my self somewhere between 150-155 pounds and 10% body fat.

Goals for the 2012 Season

Now that I’ve had a couple of weeks of training and have done my post season analysis, it’s time to make some goals.  What makes a good goal?  One that has both a time and a specific, measurable objective.  So, “go faster”, is a bad one!  Without further ado, my goals for the 2012 racing season:

Hindsight is 20/20

My season unfortunately came to an abrupt end on on Monday when I tore several ligaments in my left hand, so I am left with no choice but to end my season and begin focusing on the next.  While not ideal, it’s also not the end of the world either.  This end allows me to take a long hard look and what went wrong/right and figure out what I need to do to make this next season even better.  As an added bonus, being forced to take my season break means I’ll be able to started training earlier, which means I will be ready for some extra early season racing!

A Lesson in Bad Position

The Bannock Criterium started off like any other, a sprint off of the start line in order to position for the first turn.  In fact, this race was pretty standard and I even felt like the race was downright easy until about five laps to go.  This is where I started having problems.

In a criterium, position is everything (I’ll write more about this in another post).  If you’re not reasonably near the front, then you can’t respond to attacks very well.  If you’re boxed in the middle of the peloton, you also can’t respond to much.  From this point in the race (5 laps to go),  I did a poor job of creating escape routes and staying near the front.  What would happen is I would move up, but, once I attained good position, I wouldn’t fight hard enough and ended up getting boxed in by other racers trying to do the same thing.  Once this happened, I would generally get sent four or five position back, which I would then have to make up again.  This constant battle is no way to race a criterium.

Weekly Update

Let me first start by saying that I love training and I love racing.  With that said I can’t wait for the season to be over.  Burnout is high this time of year because many of us have been racing and training hard since last October and, for some, even earlier.  No matter how much success you have, it can be tough to make it through an entire season, but I’m pushing on.  I have most likely six (or so) more race days coming up and I plan to make the most of them.  Starting with the Salida Classic Criterium and the State Championship Road Race.