Championship Weekend

This weekend is the USAT Duathlon National Championships in Tucson, AZ and me and several friends will try to qualify for Team USA and represent the USA at the World Championships in Nancy, France later this year. I have to admit that I have never been so hyped/nervous/anxious as I have the past couple weeks. I know I’m not the first athlete that has invested huge amounts of time and preparation for a big event, but this race is my early season Super Bowl and I want to have a good showing. 

My coach, Francois Modave, has done miracles with my training and I know that I am at my absolute best right now. Obviously, as I train throughout the year I will get better, but I know right now I’m in the best possible shape I can be in at this point in the season.

So what concerns do I have? Well, first and foremost is going out to fast during the first run. I need to tell myself that it is “ok” to let the other runners sprint away at the start of the race and focus on my own pace for the first 5k. But what is “my” pace? Good question! I’m really going to try to fall somewhere between the 6:30-6:40 range for the first 5k. I know I can run faster, but I need to have something left for the final run.

The bike is 35k and going to be a real mystery for me. It consist of two loops, so at least I will have an idea of what I need to do on the second loop based on my first loop time. I’m shooting for the hour mark on the bike portion.

The final run will be gut check time. Coming off the bike the legs will feel like cement, but I need to remember that it is now or never. Ideally, I would like to have a similar run time as the first 5k, but I will be happy with anything around 7:00 minute miles. If I don’t spend too much time in transition and I can hit my times, I should be able to finish somewhere around the edge of qualifying. This assumes everything goes perfect and as most of you know things rarely go perfect in competition.

Hope to have a race report up by Sunday. Good luck to everyone racing this weekend and especially the Mighty Mujer triathletes competing in El Paso.

So Now What?! :/

So now what? If you are new to the sport of triathlons, such as myself, you might be asking yourself what to do during the so called off season. I say the so called off season, because as many of you have found out, just not training or training very little is not really an option. Sure sitting next to a nice warm fire and sleeping in on the weekends feels nice, but sooner or later your body just can’t handle doing nothing. Plus, once you take considerable time off your body will hate you for it once you start training again. A fellow triathlete and coach, Francois Modave, has some great tips and advice on his blog that you should take a look at http://elpasotricoaching.wordpress.com/ .

So what am I doing this off-season? First and foremost I am determined to develop better swim technique and improve my times in the pool. Since I decided to commemorate my first 70.3 with a tattoo, I had to take some time off from the pool, but I’m back at it and working on several aspects of the swim. In sprint races my swim was never a big concern because the distance was so short that I didn’t give up too much time, but in the longer races (70.3) I was giving the strong swimmers a ten minute head start and that is just not acceptable.  I don’t expect to be first out of the water next season, but I hope to at least be able to see the leaders leaving the transition area as I get out of the water.

The second thing I’m focusing on is cadence. In all three disciplines cadence plays a role and I need to get better at maintaining a steady cadence and building up so that it will become faster and faster as my training increases. Just playing back the past season in my mind I can point to specific times when my bike cadence or my run cadence broke down and my pace started to slow. I want to improve on that and make sure I am steady all race long.

Finally, I’m using the off-season to layout my upcoming race schedule and plan my training schedule accordingly. I need to be peaking at the time of my “A” races and not getting to those races so fatigued. By doing long term planning, I can build in the right amount of taper for each race and not just taper because I’m exhausted.

In addition to training I will be doing a few half-marathons and 5k’s to keep the competitive juices flowing. I don’t have a triathlon on my schedule until March, but will do a few duathlons in February to get the season underway. I also promise to post more often and will have a few product reviews for next time.