102.1

Not the new triathlon distance but my average body temperature over the last four days. Man, I've been sick. It's been very anxiety provoking laying around in bed and on the couch for that long when my schedule has been duck ass tight for the last two years. It's kind of a relief knowing that there is nothing really that can't be done later, not the case if I was still planning to do Xterra West. I'd be freaking out because I'm still really weak, not that I was superstrong a week ago. Which leads me to some post-mortem comments on the April 6th TT that needn't be exhumed.

I'll keep it brief. Basically it was a windy day with gusts to 13 from the south which is a headwind into the whole backside stretch of the course including the false flats. I knew it would be slow but at least the Ptap would help my pacing. Before my warmup I met a guy who travelled all the way from Park City to race at our little dust bowl. I pinned his number and he asked me, what are you racing, the 50's. I thought he was talking about some part of my equipment I guess, then I realized he was talking AG. I told him 30's and stuck him with a pin, twice. That'll teach him to act stupid. So I had a good warmup and was feeling okay but thought my interval sessions would pull me through because I had worked hard to improve my wattage. I was on time relaxed and ready to throw down but as I settled into the first lap my laddered split wattage started hurting me way to soon. Not what you want to have happen when you go out easy. The headwind sections really dropped the speed and required a lot of shifting. It was hard to find the sweet spot in my gearing. I told myself I had the advantage with Power reading and the rest of the field would struggle as well trying to maintain average speed through the tough spots. Still I

Graph details. check the speed variation, crazy for this flat course.

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couldn't get the Power up to my goal. It reminded me of the feeling I had at Wildflower last year, where I just couldn't get it going. I basically just held on and tried to not blow up. I knew I wouldn't make it sub 30:00 at about 200m to go so I kind of let up and cruised in at 30:16. Not that it really matters but the guy in front of me went 30:15, doh, lesson learned. Just frustrated was all. It was a rough day, but good training and another start. I went for a 30 minute run right off the bike to prep for the Pine Valley DU. Probably a good idea to do that since it had been a while. It felt surprisingly good. I don't have much of an explanation for the decreased performance except that maybe my aerobic fitness has decreased with less total training hours.

Well this leads me to my prognosis. I'm probably not going to race this Saturday after all. I want to slowly get back to some activity tomorrow and hopefully rebuild some fitness to start the Road Race in May. Getting another start with the CAT 5's would be nice.