I’m feeling some good training fatigue building up here. I wrapped up last week with a 5 mi road race on Saturday and Strength ride on the road bike on Sunday.
Saturdays road race was the third in the Winter Distance Series at Chatfield Reservoir. The fairly flat course is an out and back on the roads and bike paths in the park. It snowed lightly the night before and left the course a little wet and snowy in the shaded areas. The temps were cold, in the 30′s, but the sun was out so it was tolerable. I managed to run 5:47 miles to a sub 29 minute run. Not bad, I’ll take it considering the conditions and the time of year. I feel like I am making good progress in the run and looking forward to continued improvement.
Sunday I woke up a little stiff and sore in the lower legs. The sun was out again and the temps improved by rising into the mid-50′s. Perfect riding weather. My Sunday crew and I hit Lookout Mtn again for 3 climbs with strength intervals. I managed to average 280 watts on the seated climbs and 295 watts on the standing climbs despite the tired legs. We managed just under 60 miles and just over 6000 ft of climbing for the 3.5 hour ride.
Monday I was toast. Made it through a light recovery swim, weight training session, and recovery spin. Today, stilling feeling the efforts from the weekend I hit the trails for a light 8 miler instead of my usual tuesday speed run. Calves still a little sore on the uphills, but overall feeling better. Before the run I hit the pool for an endurance swim of 8×200 on 17 strokes per 25 meters. I’m not too concerned with speed in the water yet. Really trying to lengthen my stroke and maintain stroke consistency over longer and longer distances. It’s tough!
This evening I just wrapped workout 7A in my stationary trainer series. Tonight’s session involved a 20 minute “climb” with surges above LT, and a variety of other LT intervals of 9 and 5 minutes in length. My legs were pretty cooked, so my power was a little down from last weeks sessions.
Things are progressing well in my first BASE cycle. I’ll keep the pressure on through the rest of the week before pulling back for a few days next week. Tomorrow is suppose to be another nice day. I can;t decide between a long road ride or another skate ski session in the mountains. Hmmm…. Decisions, decisions…… (I know, it’s rough)
CW
Last weeks training was rough. Getting back into structured workouts in the run and swim was a nice slap in the face. But… I made it through and feel much better this week.
Last weekend I got in some good endurance/strength sessions in the pool, on the running trails and on the road bike. Saturday was cold and a little snowy so I headed to the pool for some mixed stroke swimming sets. Mixing in freestyle, breast and back strokes into my sets really challenge my strength and endurance. Hopefully these kinds of workouts will make me a better overall swimmer while giving more “durability” in the water for the rest of the season. They are a fun mix too, so it keeps it interesting and challenging.
After the swim I hit the trails for a 90 minute trail run. Rolling terrain with a few steep hills thrown in for leg strength. Longest run of the new training season and felt surprisingly good, however the last 15 minutes I was looking for the trail head each time I crested what I was hoping to be the final climb of the day.
Sunday we hit up Lookout Mountain for some strength climbs on the bike (sensing a theme here?). This weekly winter ride has been a tradition since I’ve lived in Denver. Big gears, low cadence climbing up the 4 mile, 7% grade. These climbs go a long way to building strength and power on the bike. Last week I had a good group of 5 friends join me for the climbs which is always nice. Makes riding through the chilly temps a little easier and more enjoyable.
After a light recovery day on Monday, I’m back at it this week with more speed work on the treadmill, intervals on the trainer and laps in the pool. Body seems to be adjusting somewhat already to the stresses of training as I don’t feel nearly as bad as I did last week at this time.
For my sake, I hope this trend continues.
Okay, it’s taken me a while to get my race schedule dialed in. I’ve been going back and fourth on what I want to do, where I want to spend my money, and what events will work best for me considering where I’m at in my “racing career”. I’ve thought long and hard, gone back and fourth, and finally have come to a conclusion. So here it is my official race schedule for 2009:
March 8 – XTERRA Winter World Championships, Ogden, UT
May 2 – XTERRA West Cup, Las Vegas, NV
May 17 – XTERRA Mid West Cup, Augusta, MI
May 24 – XTERRA South East Cup, Pelham, AL
June 6 – XTERRA North West Cup, Northern, ID
June 20 – Buffalo Creek XTERRA, Bailey, CO
July 18 – XTERRA Mountain Cup, Beaver Creek, CO
August 2 – Indian Peaks XTERRA, Nederland, CO
August 9 – 5430 Long Course Tri, Boulder, CO
August 22 – Iron Creek Xterra, Somewhere, SD
September 13 – Harvest Moon Long Course Tri, Aurora, CO
September 26 – XTERRA National Championship, Ogden, UT
October 25 – XTERRA World Championship, Maui, HI
Xterra is the obvious focus again for the third year in a row. I feel like I have yet to fully tap into my potential in that sport so I am going to stick with it for another year. New to the calendar this year are a few road tri’s. I want to get back into a few this year since its been several seasons since really racing any road tri’s. I have two half-IM’s on the schedule as well as 3-4 shorter distance events in mind that will work well for training purposes.
Also a new addition is the Winter Xterra race. This is a far stretch for me since I have only just begun to get comfortable on skis. This event is really intriguing to me and I am having such a fun time going up and down hills on skis, I thought I’d give it try. Now I’m hearing that the ski portion of the race is fairly advanced (ie. 2500 feet of climbing and descending) and I have only done xc and skate skiing to this point, so I may well be in over my head on this one. We’ll see.
Different from last year, I will not be doing too many mountain bike races. I love racing my mountain bike, so I’m sure I will do a few, but I feel like I really need to focus more on the “tri” part of “triathlon”. This means spending more time racing in the swim, bike, run mode or some variation there of. I will have several training events such as Stroke ‘n Strides, running races, bike races and road tri’s to further enhance my training calendar throughout the season.
My racing season begins in May and wraps up in the fall. My big events for the year are the XTERRA Mountain Cup here in CO in July and XTERRA Nationals in UT in the end of September. Worlds in HI are important as well, but I’m not putting as big an emphasis on that one. The Mountain Cup and Nationals race courses suit me the best of any out there, so I am super fired up for those and will make those my priority events for the year. All of the races leading up to those will be strictly for preparation for those two events.
Three days in and I’m already feeling a little roughed up. Monday was an easy swim followed by a strength session in the gym. Not bad. Then yesterday I hit the treadmill for some speed work and felt surprisingly good after. Following the run, I hit the pool for some stroke count swimming. That was a little tough, considering I’ve only done a few weeks of 30 minute easy drill swimming workouts prior to this 50 minute session. Arms were feeling it for sure. Then later in the evening it was off to trainer class. We are at week 5 so the intensity is ramping up with hard one-legged strength intervals, tempo climbing and surges. My legs were officially tenderized after the trainer session.
Despite some before bed stretching, I woke up this morning with some pretty tired and stiff legs. Welcome back to training I guess. This morning I escaped to the mountains for a 2.5 hour XC ski session. about 75 minutes each of classic skiing and skate skiing. This stuff is hard. We’re talking HR’s in the tempo/threshold zones for nearly the entire time. The low impact and different movements seem to help relieve tired muscles leaving me feeling better than when I woke up this morning.
Some more stretching is definitely needed, but hopefully tomorrow I will wake up feeling a little fresher than today.
Tomorrow I start my official training program for my 2009 Xterra campaign.
The last few weeks have been super hectic. I took the last few weeks of my off-season to pack up and move across town. Moving is never fun, but I figured now is the time to get it done before the busy training season begins. I’ve also been super busy with work and what training I have been doing during my off season. My new location at Green Mountain will be ideal. The running and riding trails are 200 yards down the street, the rec center with lap pool is 300 yards in another direction and the running track is 400 yards in the other direction. Ideal indeed!
I’m still in the process of finalizing my complete 2009 schedule. I will get that posted up here shortly. I also have some new and exciting training ideas for the new year. I plan to share much of that info here soon as well.
My first day of base training starts with a recovery day. Sweet! There is yoga, strength training and a light technique based swim on the schedule.