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.

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.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The first thing that any aspiring athlete that wants to take their sport to the next level should do is create a list of their strengths and weaknesses.  How else are you going to create a plan to effectively target the short-comings in your game in order to get better?  The second thing they should do, CREATE A PLAN to target those weaknesses whilst not giving up too much in their strengths.  This all sounds very simple and common sense, but it amazes me how many athletes I meet that just sort of go with the flow and never actually get any better and then wonder why.  Outside of the first couple of months or years of competing in a sport, you won’t make magical strength gains.  You will eventually plateau and every performance gain thereafter will take serious dedication.

A New Direction

Firstly, I apologize for my extended absence.  Between going back to school, training nearly full time and general laziness, I’ve been short on time to post.  Needless to say, a lot has changed.  I was on form, ready to demolish the collegiate season when I was in yet another bike wreck.  This time, I broke a small bone in my wrist into a couple of pieces (hopefully I can find the x-rays and post them).  It was actually kind of funny, you didn’t even have to be a doctor to see that I had seriously messed something up. There was a piece of bone just floating around my wrist, attached to nothing.  Unfortunately, this has led to a change in my life.

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.

So Close I Could Taste It

Today was the Vic’s Expresso Criterium in Prospect Park, which is located in Longmont.  Coming in to this race I had a lot of confidence after coming in third at the State Criterium Championship as well as second at the Sanitas Sports Criterium.  As usual, I showed up a few hours early to get registered and walk the course.  I’ve found that walking the course (or riding it slowly) is a great way to get a feel for how things are going to play out.  I’ll also generally watch a previous race from various places to know where the good lines are in the corners as well as where I can pedal and where I can’t.  I did my standard 25 minute spin the on the trainer and rolled up to the start.

The One that Got Away

North Boulder Classic is, well, a classic in Boulder.  A criterium with a rich and storied history with numerous big names coming out to race, and win, the event each year.  This year was my first attempt at this technical criterium.  In fact, given the nature of the course, I came into the day with extremely good feelings about the day.

As has become the norm the last few weeks, BRC Reality decided that they would drive the front for the first several laps, attacking and then slowing the peloton at the front.  This tactic is particularly good at a course like this one because they were able to keep everything strung out most of the race.  I’ve been taking a different approach to my racing in that, instead of hiding in the middle of the peloton, I have been ensuring to stay in the top three to eight riders.  From previous experience and basic logic, this should work out as all of the action naturally happens at the front (this also helps avoid crashes that happen from people diving corners.