As opposed to? Pictures? That'd be better. I always liked the pop up picture books growing up. Although, I was more enamored with how they actually worked. Like, you open the page and then - pop! A pop up picture of a castle or a boat or something else as seemingly grandiose. How'd they do that? I'd eventually ruin the book trying to figure that out. Hold on, what was I supposed to be talking about again?
Right. A recap of this year. Well, first, its not over and the biggest event hasn't happened just yet (Ironman Arizona. My first 140.6. For all of you non endurance types, thats a 140.6 miles of racing by swimming, biking and...hopefully running.). I've touched on a little with my initial post but will detail a bit more for anyone interested.
2010 was a bit of a mashup with no direction and no real race planning. My friends Jon Lagasse and Mike Stefanik wanted to sign up for a 70.3 (non endurance types thats a half ironman or 70.3 miles of racing. Actually, I'm going to refer to you non endurance types as "nets" going forward. Get it? Wow. Lame. Just go with it. Saves my fingers some pecking stress.) and settled on Rhode Island. So I of course signed up after having only raced one triathlon in my life. Super! What did I get myself into? I managed to get in an olympic distance race before tackling Rhode Island and then raced the Augusta 70.3 after Rhode Island because I had such a great time and also wanted to better my race time. My hated ITB never really allowed me to have the races I wanted last year and part of that was I just had no idea what I was doing. I'd essentially just go as hard as I could most everyday. Some days that was "hard" and other days, not so much. I finished Rhode Island in 4:52 I think and Augusta in 4:39 but wasn't able to really run in either race. It was more of a run/walk/wince sort of ordeal. Think I managed over 1:40 for both runs, which even last year was well below my fitness. I did manage to take an overall win at a local sprint on long island in the fall. Not a huge race, but was still an experience breaking the tape. I wanted more of that.
Which brings me to the end of 2010/beginning of 2011. As mentioned, I started working with Coach at the beginning of the year. I knew that if I wanted to keep myself injury free while also improving efficiently that I'd need some professional direction. I made a few big investments to help aid in my training. The first and one of the most important is my SRAM Quarq powermeter. It's been invaluable to my racing and training. Its the ying to my yang while on my bike. And, Quarqs customer service is unbelievable. I needed my unit recalibrated and they had it back it me on the same day. (Note: without question, the best investment I or anyone else can make in this sport is to hire a coach. I thought I could do it on my own. I thought I could research enough but at the end of the day a coach doesnt just coach and provide workouts. Hes an outlet when things dont go well, an outlet when they do go well, he holds me back when appropriate and pushes when I need it. Hes patient with me and lets me bonce ideas off of him. Its a two way relationship. If you dont have a coach and want one, call mine!) Second was a Garmin 310 XT to use while running. Great device for any runner or triathlete. Garmins online software is great and the ease of use for this device is on par with an apple product. I tell people that Garmin is the Apple of the GPS world and I mean it.
Training during the first part of the year was all about pumping up my FTP ("Nets": that stands for functional threshold power which is essentially the amount of power one can produce for an hour. This metric is important as it allows you to establish pacing zones for training and racing.) and vdot score ("Nets": your vdot is a metric used to measure your current running ability by providing a value based on a current race time. Again, it allows you to establish proper pacing zones.). Cycling has always been my most loved of the three sports and it shows in my performances. We've seen my FTP grow by almost 30% in just 7 months of training. My run has been improving in similar fashion. Once we approached race season, we bumped up the volume in all three sports while also trying to continually increase fitness.
I'm very happy with my gains thus far. Putting it all together on race day, especially in long course racing, is the x factor in this sport. Nutrition also being just as important as any of the three individual sports (we'll get into more of this in upcoming posts).
I thought I might get into some race reports tonight. Some very brief race reports. But, enough is enough. Those will come, but not on this night.
Where are those pop up books again?
Right. A recap of this year. Well, first, its not over and the biggest event hasn't happened just yet (Ironman Arizona. My first 140.6. For all of you non endurance types, thats a 140.6 miles of racing by swimming, biking and...hopefully running.). I've touched on a little with my initial post but will detail a bit more for anyone interested.
2010 was a bit of a mashup with no direction and no real race planning. My friends Jon Lagasse and Mike Stefanik wanted to sign up for a 70.3 (non endurance types thats a half ironman or 70.3 miles of racing. Actually, I'm going to refer to you non endurance types as "nets" going forward. Get it? Wow. Lame. Just go with it. Saves my fingers some pecking stress.) and settled on Rhode Island. So I of course signed up after having only raced one triathlon in my life. Super! What did I get myself into? I managed to get in an olympic distance race before tackling Rhode Island and then raced the Augusta 70.3 after Rhode Island because I had such a great time and also wanted to better my race time. My hated ITB never really allowed me to have the races I wanted last year and part of that was I just had no idea what I was doing. I'd essentially just go as hard as I could most everyday. Some days that was "hard" and other days, not so much. I finished Rhode Island in 4:52 I think and Augusta in 4:39 but wasn't able to really run in either race. It was more of a run/walk/wince sort of ordeal. Think I managed over 1:40 for both runs, which even last year was well below my fitness. I did manage to take an overall win at a local sprint on long island in the fall. Not a huge race, but was still an experience breaking the tape. I wanted more of that.
Which brings me to the end of 2010/beginning of 2011. As mentioned, I started working with Coach at the beginning of the year. I knew that if I wanted to keep myself injury free while also improving efficiently that I'd need some professional direction. I made a few big investments to help aid in my training. The first and one of the most important is my SRAM Quarq powermeter. It's been invaluable to my racing and training. Its the ying to my yang while on my bike. And, Quarqs customer service is unbelievable. I needed my unit recalibrated and they had it back it me on the same day. (Note: without question, the best investment I or anyone else can make in this sport is to hire a coach. I thought I could do it on my own. I thought I could research enough but at the end of the day a coach doesnt just coach and provide workouts. Hes an outlet when things dont go well, an outlet when they do go well, he holds me back when appropriate and pushes when I need it. Hes patient with me and lets me bonce ideas off of him. Its a two way relationship. If you dont have a coach and want one, call mine!) Second was a Garmin 310 XT to use while running. Great device for any runner or triathlete. Garmins online software is great and the ease of use for this device is on par with an apple product. I tell people that Garmin is the Apple of the GPS world and I mean it.
Training during the first part of the year was all about pumping up my FTP ("Nets": that stands for functional threshold power which is essentially the amount of power one can produce for an hour. This metric is important as it allows you to establish pacing zones for training and racing.) and vdot score ("Nets": your vdot is a metric used to measure your current running ability by providing a value based on a current race time. Again, it allows you to establish proper pacing zones.). Cycling has always been my most loved of the three sports and it shows in my performances. We've seen my FTP grow by almost 30% in just 7 months of training. My run has been improving in similar fashion. Once we approached race season, we bumped up the volume in all three sports while also trying to continually increase fitness.
I'm very happy with my gains thus far. Putting it all together on race day, especially in long course racing, is the x factor in this sport. Nutrition also being just as important as any of the three individual sports (we'll get into more of this in upcoming posts).
I thought I might get into some race reports tonight. Some very brief race reports. But, enough is enough. Those will come, but not on this night.
Where are those pop up books again?