Do I really care?

I’m sitting here the night before the Oceanside 70.3. I’m not excited about doing the race. I start in 10 and a half hours. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night which has lead me to be a bit tired and cranky. My freaking goggles that haven’t leaked in the pool in weeks, leaked all freaking day today while I was swimming. So we’ll see how it goes, I’m not really optimistic about having a good result, but I’m not resigned to having a bad result. All I really want to do it take a long nap, about 12 hours of napping. So my faithful 11 readers, check back in later this weekend and I’ll let you know how it went.

You Want Some Blame?

I would love to lay blame for my pathetic fitness level on someone. Maybe even you, one of my faithful 11 readers. Who wants the blame?

Really though I have no one to blame but myself. These next two weekends should be interesting. I have the Tucson Tri on Sunday. It’s a sprint so I’m pretty confident I should make it through. It’s so short I’ll have to go train that afternoon as well. Then six days later, I’ve got the Oceanside 70.3 half ironman. This should be interesting. While I’m somewhat optimistic I’ll actually not drown, when your last two swims total 6000 yards and that is just about 35% of your yearly swimming, well, no good can come of that. The good news is I can’t go slower then 1:25 per 100 yards, the bad news is I can’t go faster then 1:20. Not to mention my power meter still won’t give me numbers. While it doesn’t read “You Suck” while riding anymore, it still says “Wattage to low to Display”. Sigh. Stupid f*cking computer.

On the bright side, while not fast, my running is coming along. On the downside, I’ve got one run over 10 miles in my legs since November. I’ll be going for the Area Under the Curve approach to the half run. Let’s hope that I’ve got enough 7-8 mile runs in my legs that I can fake the last 5k. Maybe I’ll go run long this week…twice.

Billy and Sarah have been telling me for months to get back into the water. In retrospect I should have listened. It seems to take longer then before to get back into shape.

Just like one year ago, my bike is still not sorted out. Instead of not changing anything so close to the races, I go and stick on new aerobars. Brilliant, in a stupid sort of way. I realized that the extensions are a bit long, currently, but I’m confident that I’ll grow into them. You need a special tool to shorten the bars. Of course I don’t own that tool. So I figure f*ck it. Maybe by April or May I’ll sort that out.

So kids what I’m trying to say is do what I say and not what I do. It’ll work out better in the end for everyone. Besides I’m a trained professional 😉

Pragmatism

Since getting back into decent shape is proving to be a struggle, I need to be pragmatic about the early season goals I set out for myself. While doing well at the Trisports.com Desert Classic Duathlon would be great, and racing at the front of my age group and the amateurs in Oceanside was a goal, given that I’m in piss poor shape right now, maybe a reset is in order.
It’s one thing to be optimistic, it’s another thing to be unrealistic. Realistically, I don’t have the time to get into the shape I need to be to meet my original goals. This is the worst shape I’ve been in in the last 6 years or so. Since October, the pool has seen me once for 800 yards and I’ve yet to make an appearance this year. After crashing my bike, I didn’t run for 24 days. Over the last two weeks I’ve managed almost 37 miles of running. That is not going to help me get to the finish line in a speedy manner. Neither is running at the speed I’m currently plodding along at. My cycling has been almost none existent as well, maybe 150 miles since the crash. At least that seems to bounce back fairly quickly if past history is any indication.
What needs to be done? As I’d tell any of the athletes I coach who are making a comeback from injury or illness, consistency is the key. No days without working out. A workout or two or three a day keeps the rest of the competition at bay. Or at least gets them closer then they would have been. So that’s the plan. Workout and workout often.

On a side note, congrats to Erin, 3rd place at the U of A crit in her category!