Satisifed With Managing Life and Triathlon

When life gets very busy, outside of triathlon, maintaining forward and positive training becomes paramount. This time of year when training matters most (Xterra Nationals and Worlds on the horizon), it is not good enough to simple get through a workout, but to seek quality and flat out make big gains. Just as I have been training my body all season, I have also been training my mind to deal with not only managing triathlon related things like pushing through a hard workout or focusing when it really counts during a race, but dealing with how to get dialed-in to do what it takes when it comes to training, irrespective of what is going on at work.

As I sit here reflecting on the past couple of weeks, I have to say I am satisfied with my forward progress with training....actually, I haven't sacrificed a single thing amidst a very busy work schedule. I am right on track with where I should be and a continuing to push the envelope on every area of training. Sweet.

On the swim I hit a bit of a plateau, but I am actively employing a strategy to push through. When training gets "easy" and times stop coming down...its is time to change it up. The goal of my new plan, which is one week in, should buy me another minute, or so, on race day. It matters and I'll take it.

On the bike, I wrapped up the 6hr/long ride stuff two weekends back and have been really working on very specific areas where I was deficient on at Ogden. I love it...some things are so very easy to remedy, while others are more difficult. In particular, while keeping my vertical training assault on full bore, I've been working both on the road and on the MTB with maintaining power over rolling terrain. Get it. Got it. Done. This will help on the middle section of the Tahoe / Xterra Nationals course. What a shame to hit the pure climbs well only to loose time on the easy stuff. No mas. Another big addition to my bike has been to include a couple days of MTB training with a super fast training partner who really pushes me. We did 4hrs with 5500ft on the MTB on Saturday on terrain that was much rockier and more difficult than Maui. Just what I need...although I seem to have to take my poor Cannondale Taurine into the shop after every time I do this ride. Rocky is an understatement.

Apart from track workouts, running hasn't been much of a focus of late....not anymore. Last week started a nice block of balanced run focus. The track stuff persists and I really dread the workouts because I do them solo...and...they are hard. Every workout seems to take all I've got. The frequency, duration and speed of bricks are picking up in addition to the addition of some duathlon-like workouts that are oh-so-deceiving. By this I mean, in a run-bike-run scenario, the first run typically feels real good and lures your in...then...the bike feels abnormally hard...and the final fun is as you'd expect...hard. Today I did such a brick and was able to turn a pace above my normal race pace pretty "easily."

I haven't fully absorbed what this week has in store, but it looks like about 12k in the water, 5 bikes and 4 runs, 3 of which are transition runs.