Treadmill Workout

This is a workout I wrote with Benny for a fast runner (ITU style) athlete to use. I have modified this to 2 x through for some of my athletes but many started with just 1 x through. Its good for economy and foot speed and thought you may enjoy it.

This is a treadmill set. warm up 10 min then at 30 seconds per mile faster than 5k speed and 1% grade perform the following set 1-2 x through with 5 min easy between:

2min  @ 5k - 30 seconds if possible on treadmill (EZ1 min)

increase speed .5mph 4x 45 seconds (EZ 1 min)

increase speed .5mph 4x 30 seconds (EZ 1 min)

 Cool Down 10-15 min

Old Friends

I have done 2 races this year so far and they have been quite fun. The 29^th was actually my birthday as well which caused me to really reflect on a few things on my last ride.

Waiting in line for me registration process for Vegas 70.3 at St. Croix, and getting a chance to talk to as many good friends at American TTT really made me think again about how awesome our sport is. I do not get to see everyone very often but when you do at races it is we never miss a beat. I am able to walk up to people and almost not miss sentences in conversations we had been having at the last race. Combine that with Facebook and twitter it makes it pretty easy to all stay connected.

Waiting in line to register and making plans to meet up at following races, or Kona, or Vegas is so cool and so much fun. I think the younger guys are going to do that too and now that the sport is getting bigger I hope to see even more relationships form, but who knows.

I’ve  been racing now for 20 years which is hard to believe and when I started we were a pretty small community. We all do battle together, and then are usually there right away to help each other out on workouts, or training advice, offer up homestays, etc. There are a few bad apples of course in every area of life but those guys seem to be weeded out pretty quickly and I still see a few of them floating around grouchy and or as arrogant as ever. J

If you are just getting into the sport, you will start to notice after a while you can literally travel the World and start to run into people you consider “Friends”. See you out there this summer!

St. Croix Race Report

I am glad I came and did this race again. I was originally going to try to qualify and since I already have my spot do not need to.  So We made a decision to be in shape for the race and go as fast as I can, btu not to full prepare for it as I had early season previously and it kind of showed up today.

 Weather was raining in the am and it turned out it just kept raining all day long.  For me personally this took a little impetus off my motivation because, well it just did. J That combined with the last time I was here three years ago I got SCHOOLED on the course I decided to play it a bit conservative today.

The swim was pretty uneventful. My speed suit must have been pulled on because I did notice it was open after about 1000K so I rolled over and wrestled that back closed but other than that it was pretty straight forward. Some dude took off at the beginning and was GONE! He outswam Potts by 8 min! I can tell you it was true too because I saw him go and couldn’t believe it.

My transition was slow as I never changed “auto on/off” on my new garmin and I had to mess with that and I didn’t really feel like just running through the mud because I really didn’t think that would matter too much to my overall placing at the end of the day.

I took off somewhat easy and really tried to ease into the bike. Again, I wanted to not have any cramping today and the hills are so far out of what I have been training lately I just needed to feel it out for a bit. Also, there was standing water up to 6 inches deep in several places. I kept thinking how bad crashing would such and with as hard as the course is normally I didn’t see the point in taking risk on descents and corners.

I passed most of the women pro (I was in the 4^th wave I think) and by mile 40 was in 19^th overall place on the road. The feedback I kept getting was that I was doing all the passing, watts were up whenever I felt like pushing and I thought “hey I must be ridding well, lets just play it cool”. I also was afraid the rain would stop, the sun would come out and would just steam cook us all. So was hedging for that.

With 5 miles or so to go I kept looking back and saw literally nobody.  I relaxed all the way into T2 again, thinking the run is hard enough, pushing the last 5-8 miles would probably take more from that then time gained.  

T2 was again slow. I had put all my running stuff in plastic bags and had to unwrap it all, and wanted to put on socks and not with muddy feet, etc. blah blah blah, my transitions were WAY slow! My fault, but I honestly didn’t mind so much because again, I didn’t think it would matter. – It did, as it always does.

2 guys passed me in T2 -I never saw them again.

 I ran steady for the first 7 miles, then just felt a little “out of shape” and had to slow down a touch the last 5. Not a catastrophic reduction, but I was fading.

In the end, I felt like I biked too conservative but that is usually not an issue, and I feel my base is a little light, but that is by design. So it wasn’t a great race, but it wasn’t a bad one either.  I speant WAY TOO MUCH time in transitions, as they were abotu 6 min added to my bike and run combined, but hey, it was raining! :)

I am happy to get in a solid effort today and get the season started.  

Swim with the stars in St. Croix

In St. Croix, and have been managing to dodge most of the rain showers. This place is so humid right now it really doesn’t matter as I seem to be dripping with sweat as soon as I leave the room regardless.

We all got 1 chance to swim the course so we went down to the swim start Friday at 11am and dove in as a group. I found myself at the front as I am sure the better swimmers waited to get in a bit longer but it was pretty short lived. I saw a couple guys swim by me on the right hand side in between some pick up efforts I was doing, and I decided to go with them.

At the Turn buoy one of the guys stopped to show me a spotted ray right under us. That was cool, but even cooler was the fact he was wearing some black and yellow goggles… Lance… NFW. I do not tend to get overly excited to see particular stars, but it was pretty cool to be out there just chatting about sea life with him. I told him if he pulled the rest of the way in on the swim, I would of the work on the bike. J He smiled and we were off again.

I have to admit at that point I wanted to keep up because I thought, damn, people pay like 10K a crack to ride with the dude, why not go for a swim? I hit his feet a few times, but nothing major and I kept thinking it was cool to be right behind the guy that I watched for so many years, win the Tour and seemed to be a figure kind of like MJ (Im from Chicago) who would always just be that guy on the TV, here I was not hitting his feet and I kept thinking about all the victories those feet have pedaled him too.

I couldn’t figure out who was hanging around on my right shoulder, but he wasn’t giving up any groud and to me, it seemed like we were swimming pretty well. When we finished the guy next to us said “Damn, you swim OK for a cyclist- It was Terenzo Bozzone, another guy who is damn fast and was an honor to swim with.

The coolest part of all was to have all the hard swimming I had been doing this year pay off and to see at least that day I could swim with those guys.

When we climbed up the ladder out of the ocean, I went my way, and he went his. He was mobbed, and I was proud of myself for just playing it cool like I was swimming with just anyone else.

I would post pictures, but I told Lance “no pictures please” J