Just a post.

Today is a day off. Getting ready for the final surge into race mode. With San Diego International on Sunday, I'm fired up to finally feel completely healthy. The training has been going very well this last four days. I'm not exactly sure where the fitness stands at this point. The training hasn't been perfect and I'm about 2 pounds heavier than wildflower. This all can hopefully be overcome by a well executed race effort. This will be my focus this week as I tackle this final week of training. Concentration on super clean diet, and plenty of good sleep are two of the things I can control while mentally preparing. I'll be trying to stay thinking about one thing during the race, what can I do right now to go faster? For one race hard. Run harder. There's not much more I can do about the fitness, so race execution is what it's all about.

Just to recap the training


Thursday was another day off.


Friday
was a day for open water swim. the best scenario was to hook up with the tri club swim at the shores, but that wasn't until 6pm and it was supposed to get windy. Swimming in choppy water is good for overall preparation but not going to do me any good for the protected race venue. I headed out to find some clean water and drove up to the shores but the wind had already come up and was whitecapping at 10:30! Back down to Sunset Cliffs for some protected water. The kelp beds knock down the chop but not the surf. The water temp was up and was really smooth.

The first 20 strokes felt great then I started to get some premature fatigue/discomfort in my left shoulder. This happens from time to time and usually goes away after about 15 minutes. It didn't. I fought it off the whole swim, trying everything short of severely modifying the stroke. The only thing that helped was breathing to the left side. I've struggled trying to execute this in the pool and have not had the skill or the patience. I started to get it. Ten strokes on each side, not a bad rhythm. At least now I think I could do it if I had to. I swam for 45 minutes which was a good swim, just not a great confidence building workout. I think I know what's causing this to show up. Sounds crazy but I hold my baby in the left arm. Sometimes until my bicep is burning. It stresses the shoulder a little too. I'm going to consciously switch arms and see how it goes. The other factor is that I could be arming it too much with the left side, not engaging the lats and pecs. Just an educated guess. Always something to work on.



Saturday
was the long run. I normally run on Sundays but I think Jim moved it up to push it further from race day. I like that theory. I felt really good on this 90 minute Z1-2 run. Fresh and controlled. I averaged 8:20's with HR avg 143. It did start to creep in the last 20 minutes but nothing beyond expectations. Max HR 160. I think my technique and efficiency are improving and I'm looking forward to the test on Sunday.



Sunday
was Father's Day and took advantage of training when I wanted and recovering how I wanted. Nice! I took off for my 2 hour ride and prerode the course including some 15-20 minute efforts at close to race pace. I was a little fatigued from the run Saturday so the power wasn't as high as I'd seen, but not bad. Normalized power was 230W for the whole ride. Avg Power was 200W. I'm looking to average about 220-230W for the race effort. That'd be a good ride.