The Offseason

Its been a real struggle lately to scale back my workouts for the offseason. Part of me wants to go full out and attack my workouts the same way I do during the season but I know that this level cannot be maintained and makes me prone to injury. The other part of me wants to sleep in every day (I have overslept for two workouts in the last two weeks, something I almost never do). I have some specific goals for next year and I feel that scaling back might diminish my ability so I have to remind myself that in the offseason I can still maintain my endurance but need to focus on strength and speed too.


I am supposed to be rehabbing a shoulder right now and I am a little weary of how much good Physical Therapy will help. If I really do need surgery then will PT do any good? Plus this is the first time I have seen a PT and after a few visits where they worked out the muscles using ART and used ultrasound now I am showing up so that I can do my strengthening exercises. Can't I just do those at home? I am smart enough to do that, why do I have to pay so that someone can watch me? I will stick with the schedule for a couple of weeks and see what they say but before long I am going to have to cut back on the office visits. Its getting expensive!



Another thing that is really hard for me to do is keep good nutritional habits. I slid pretty far the week after Longhorn and I figure a week of indulgence is probably OK but now it is getting hard to stay on track because my training schedule is not as structured either. I need to get back to it soon and besides one of my goals for offseason is to improve my nutrition plan dramatically so next season I can be just as structures as my nutrition as I am with my workouts.



Lots of changes to make so I better put down the Chocolate Bar and get to work...

Longhorn 70.3

I typically do not like to publicly post race reports. Probably because everyone and their brother does them, but I figured that I should do at least the biggest one of the year right?

I went into the HIM with high expectations. I had placed well in most of my races this year and thought that this would be no different. This race decided to knock me down a few notches from my high horse!! Lucky me it did because next year I will be smarter.

So here were my goals: Total time goal =5 hours

1. Swim- somewhere around 30 minutes.
2. Bike- under 3 hours and avg. over 18mph.
3. Run- about 1:50

Here is how actually did: Total time = 5:25:46

1. Swim- 24:38 (I have heard that the swim course was wrong and ended up being 300M short) This would make sense of my blazing speed in the water.
   
2. Bike- 2:52 avg. 19.5mph


3. Run- 2:01 avg. 9:17/mile

At first glance this is not bad and overall I am pleased with holding myself together but as I said this race humbled me and showed me just how much I still have to learn.

Probably the two notable things to talk about are: (1) I hit the wall at about 40 miles on the bike. I got depressed and started doubting myself. I knew I would hit it sometime but I did not know it would be so demoralizing and I wish I could have staved it off a little longer. (2) That at mile 55 on the bike I hit the last and the biggest hill on the course. As soon as I left the saddle to start up the hill my legs cramped up on me. The only way to keep going was to drop into a real easy gear and sit down. I think I was going about 5 miles an hour at one point. Anyway, I got to the dismount line and as soon as I stood up and jumped off the bike my legs froze again. The only thing I could do was to do a half squat and massage my legs. Finally I was able to get through transition and onto the run. By this time I was in too bad of shape to push it for fear that I would cramp and DNF. I took in as much liquid and electrolyte pills (they gave them out at the aid stations) as I could. After about 3-4 miles I was feeling good but my legs were so beat up from the cramping I could not get them to go any faster. I finished and some would say it was a respectable finish but looking at the numbers I should have been at least 30 minutes faster.

The biggest lesson I learned was to take more fluids on the bike. Including electrolyte pills which I only had four of them in 3 hours on the bike.

The greatest thing to come out of all this is that I cannot wait until my next one. Buffalo Springs 70.3 in June 2009. Can't wait!