Checking in.

Wow! 18 days since a post. You got to know somethings up. My mom just got out of the hospital after a 2 week stay from a broken hip falling from her horse and I've had to spend alot of my free time checking in on her. My wife who's a PT spent a lot of time with her also, so that meant watching the baby on her shift. The bottom line is that for a while there my training was all out of wack and I really had to juggle and struggle to get in about 75 % of scheduled workouts. Jim and just about everybody else talks about consistency as the key to success. I'll take that as good advice but it is more applicable to my long term success. Consistently gettting back at it and not allowing too much unscheduled down time. This is starting to pay off as my run is back popping a bit and I'm getting some feel back in the water. The running hasn't been as fun as the swimming having to deal with mid-afternoon runs in this disgusting weather. The thermometer hasn't been doing any justice to the true heat index. It's been hard to judge fitness when its 80 degrees and 80% humidity. My HR has been consistently 10-12 bpm higher on the run and much slower to recover. Regardless I had a 60 minute run yesterday with a negative split:

8:32 pace HR 150 avg out

8:05 pace HR 167 avg home

Still pretty slow but felt good about the run with the heat and all. I remember training in Kona last year during December for Carlsbad Half. The training was tough in the heat and humidity, but came back to the cool weather on race day and ran really well, so I guess its all relative.

Earlier in the morning I did a fun 55 minute ocean swim. 73 degrees with just the speed tube pant. Its nice to feel like your actually IN the water. I used to think that swimming in open (salt) water was more difficult than the pool. I'm slowly learning some respect for that little black line.

I've been keeping together my cycling pretty well despite all this craziness. which is nice.

I had a 6 minute test last wednesday on the trainer where I averaved 314W. My cadence was a little lower than normal at 88rpm which actually felt pretty good. Not a best but much better than I would have guessed. Other than that it's pretty much all been on the trainer for mixed tempo intervals. I think the trainer has been the key to maximizing my training time.

I'm going to have a crack at the last FI TT on Sept 9th so getting on the trainer for some steady state stuff is going to be key.

On a side note I bought the 2006 XTERRA world champs DVD to check out the venue. That race is the shitt. I would never try to convince someone its better than Ironman WC but for me short course is where its at and XTERRA is the pinnacle of that realm of violent efforts. This year there will be a pretty good showdown in the AG's with UnC James Walsh and current WC Trevor Glavin. It'll be fun to watch these guys battle it out in Tahoe and then take it to Maui.