Last Saturdays sprint tri went well. Despite a fairly strong field (including Michael Lovato and others), riding my stock road bike (all other top finishers were on their decked out aero bikes) and having done a tough combo session only 60-hours earlier (that included a 10k trail run race) I felt surprisingly good and pulled off a 6th place overall and topped my 30-34 age group. Teammate and sprint-tri ace, Luke Jay, nipped me by 5 seconds in another wave after the times were added up. I love it when coachee’s beat me. That’s when I get to start asking them for advice!

Feeling stronger this week. Last weekend I got in a nice track workout with Julie and Ed followed by a 4 hour ride in the mountains. The track workout was intended to help bring some leg speed into the Tahoe equation. Leading up to Ogden I had gotten in about 4 good weeks of track workouts and surprisingly I was able to make the same pace last weekend which confirms that my speed is coming back. Sunday I got in some time on the bike followed by a swift transition run that again surprised me how good I am beginning to feel.

The early part of this week was pretty low key with some swims, weight training sessions and light bike rides. Wednesday was another big day on the bike and run. I did a tough mountain bike ride up Mt Falcon twice then down via Lair of the Bear. I managed to pull off two back to back sub-26 minute efforts up Falcon’s, 3-ish mile, 1700 ft climb, just like the Tunnel Creek Climb in Tahoe    Total ride time was 2.5 hours. I timed it just right to finish about 30 minutes before the start of a local Wednesday night trail run race at Bear Creek Park. This week was a 6.5 mile hammer-fest that I held on for 5th place in 42-ish minutes. This workout has been proving to be a good one the last three weeks as I’ve managed to go a little bit faster on the bike climbs each week and maintain similar paces on the trail runs despite the runs getting about a mile longer each week. These sessions have been leaving me pretty shelled on the last several Thursdays and Fridays, but I think they will pay off big in a couple weeks. 

Three and a half weeks, that how long till the Xterra National Championships. A lot has happened over the last few weeks since my as-of-now  best race of this year in Ogden. The week after Ogden I was all fired up to go full bore into Nationals training and I got sick. For a whole week I was down for the count. Fever, nausea, aches, pains, intestinal distress, you name it, I had it that week. The following week I was able to resume some form of training, but I felt weak and on the edge of illness all week. I spent a lot of time on the bike logging big hours, but basically no time running or swimming because I just didn’t feel up to either.