Well, Aspen is comin' up on 3 months now, which means we can finally sleep through the night (most of the time anyway) and I can start to get a schedule going again.
1st things first, I'd like to thank my family including Theresa, Aspen, Kelly (Mom), Mike (Dad), and my two sisters Shannon and Mackenzie, and all of my friends for being so completely supportive of me doing this triathlon thing. And now that Dr. Josh Merrick, my excellent new coach with Cross-Training Enduro-Sports (www.crosstrainingendurosports.blogspot.com) living with me, I have no choice but to be successful :)
Ok, so, updates on the last 3 months.
Racing has not been going my way lately. I went down to Phoenix for the Desert Classic Du, where it was freezing and raining (yes...in PHOENIX!) and had a great first run, then got on my bike to find the back tire was flat. After 2 hours the rear wheel was changed out and I finished the race to get 8th out of 8 pros. 7 got paid.
Then it was off to Birmingham, AL for Powerman AL and the US Duathlon Champs. I was fit for this race. Josh and I were doing some great workouts and I was starting to think I could not only qualify for Worlds, but could win the race. Well, after a stellar first run in 31:30 (10k) on some narly hills I had a 20 sec. gap on the 2nd pack of 3, which included Dr. Merrick, I was swooped up by all 3 on the bike by mile 4 and by mile 20 I was way back in a distant 11th and fading hard. My back was crazy tight and I'd lost all feeling in my right foot. Then after getting stopped and run off the road by stopped vehicles, I decided it was not worth the push to simply finish the race and pulled out. The PT on hand said that I had probably pinched a nerve in my back and that I might have even put a disc out of place trying to cram myself into my old TT bike. (If anyone with TT bike hookups is reading this, could ya help me out?!) Haha
My only other race was the Protest Du down in Austin. I was ready for an easy race that saw me out in front all day and boosting my confidence. Then the day before the race I hear that someone has brought in a young pro to give me some competition and his name is Philip Graves. Now I'd remembered that name from somewhere, then it hit me that I'd been watching him with the Timex bike split at KONA on youtube the day before!! Well, this is just great. I wanted an easy race, and this guy shows up. To make things worse, he's a great guy and not cocky in the least. Now I'm just jealous, haha. Well, the race is kinda different in that it's a 2 mile run, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run, 10 mile bike and another 2 mile run. Yes, it's a double du with lots of transitions. So I took out hard in the first run and got about a minute on Graves, then hammered the first bike with everything I had trying to get out of sight and got off with about a 20 sec lead still (turns out he had a mechanical and had to fix his rear wheel). I took it easy on the 2nd run so as to keep some legs for the 2nd bike and started with about a 40 sec lead. Well, about half way I looked back to see if I could see him, and there he was 5 meters back!! Shite! He went by me like I was standing still and left me with seemingly no effort whatsoever. So I blew myself up doing anything and everything to pedal this bike (now back in my road bike, which I think I might be faster in anyway) to keep him in sight. I ended up getting to transition about 45 sec back and only two miles to catch him. With my family being there and people cheering me on I knew this was going to hurt something awful, but I sure didn't want Aspen to see her Daddy lose! I ended up going by him a little past the mile marker and just hung on to win by about 20 sec. Wow, that hurt even more than I'd thought. A win...finally!
With all of these races and training sessions, I've learned that I need two things and a TON of both of them. Number 1: TITS (Time In The Saddle) and Number 2: Much more LSD (Long, Slow, Distance) The ability to churn out a couple of 4:30 miles doesn't really help me in a half ironman!
Ok, that's about it for now. I've got the Wildflower half (with Mr. Graves yet again and good friend Desiree Ficker) coming up as my next race on May 1st.
hasta later!
-Yorek
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