New Beginnings

It's been over a year and a half since my last post. At that time I have yet to have done a single triathlon. Now I have 9 races under my belt. How time flies.

Before I get too deep into my daily rumblings I feel that it would be appropriate to fill in the blanks of the past year: My first triathlon was in May 2008. I finished in what I believed was a respectable top 20%. I went on to do a few more sprints and Olympic distance races. My times improved consistently throughout the year, and ended up with an Olympic PR of 2:29 and USAT ratings for the year at around 77.

2009 introduced a slightly different method to how I trained. Instead of focusing on how far I can push myself on a mix of volume and intensity (totally arbitrary), I decided to go easy for most of my workouts and have one or two really tough workouts a week. This 'breakthrough' workout approach was based on a book by ex-pro triathlete Brad Stearns. In retrospect I think this shift in methodology allowed me to take my bike leg to a whole new level. However it wasn't as effective for the run and swim due to the following reasons: 1. Running too hard was a sure fire recipe for injury, at least for me. 2. Swimming hard is pointless unless you swim right. My technique is still pretty below average and until that is taken care of, flailing my way to a 1:30/100 pace is totally counter productive.

With that said, I have to say that I am content with what I accomplished in 2009. This is despite falling short of my 2009 goals of getting a 2:15 olympic PR and a USAT rating of 83. My olympic PR ended being 2:18 and my final USAT rating was around 80.6.

For 2010 my goals are to break 2:10 and hit a rating of 84-85. This would set me up perfectly for my trip back to the motherland in 2011 to compete with the national team. My guess is that a 2:07 would give me the buffer I need for a comfortable win.... but that's putting the horse before the cart. The immediate goal breakdown is as follows:
1. sub 24 min swim
2. sub 1:01 40k bike leg
3. sub 42min run leg. (now this is probably one of the more ambitious goals, since I secretly do believe that an injury free season could drop me to the 40 min range and possibly a Boston Qualifying marathon later in the year).

So those times along with about 3 minutes in transitions would equate a 2:10 Olympic. There I said it.

More on recent training news soon.