The Season, part 1

So, it’s all downhill from here.  This past Sunday, I completed the longest day of training I’ll have until race day on December 4^th.  Together with my training buddies, I bicycled from Goleta Beach, just north of Santa Barbara, to downtown Malibu.  And just for fun, we mixed in a 1 hour, 15 minute run at the mid point.  I am in pain and completely exhausted.  It didn’t help that I flew in from Dallas on Saturday night.  Although I learned some great new stuff in the functional fitness world while in Texas, that trip certainly didn’t set me up for a great ride yesterday.  With three weeks until race day, though, it had to be done!  Of course, this “downhill slope” doesn’t mean that my training intensity will go down too.  The mileage will be dropping, but the interval training will pick up.  Of paramount importance is that I’m healthy on December 4^th, so flexibility and elasticity will be as important as the power gained from the intervals.

What did I do to get to this point?  Well let’s see…

Triathlon training is nearly a year-long cycle for some of us on the WB Tri Team.  We participate in several key events through the year and focus our training to be in optimal condition for each of those “A” events.  There may be some other races mixed in, but they’re considered to be more of an organized workout.  As a team, we generally prepare for two A+ races, the Wildflower Triathlon in May and the Malibu Triathlon in September.  The experienced core of our team will also add the Vineman 70.3 Half Ironman to the A+ group.

Home for the Solvang weekend

Although it’s not a race, the fourth A event is the Solvang Century Ride.  It’s the official start of our year and a beautiful weekend.  The team shares the rent of a fantastic house for the weekend, allowing for the building of great camaraderie – and minimizing costs, of course.  The significance of this early March ride is that it sets a nice aerobic fitness base and prepares us for the year ahead – it’s the launching point for the season.  At this point we’ve put in several strong weekends of riding, beginning at around 25 miles and growing up to about 80 miles.  We mix flat, long rides with shorter mountain climbs to prepare for the very up and down Solvang course.  This is only a bike ride, so you can cycle in a pack or “peloton” and draft off of other riders.  This diminishes the work done by everyone but the front rider(s).  When we get to the triathlon season, there is no drafting – everybody has to do the work!  It does take a bit of practice to be comfortable riding in a pack, particularly since we don’t regularly do so throughout the year.  You can’t just decide to ride at 20 mph, six inches behind another rider’s tire, so several weekends of practice are required.  After spending the long day in the bike saddle, speeding through wine country, we spend the night eating!  Riding 100 miles, each of us burned at least 4500 calories, so a nice big meal is in order.

Wildflower Transition

Next on the calendar is the Wildflower Triathlon which happens during the first weekend of May.  As soon as the team leaves Solvang, it’s time to get into triathlon shape.  Swimming and running need to be mixed in with the bike work and speed matters for each discipline.  There’s no more “riding”, it’s “racing” now!  Wildflower is known as the “Woodstock of Triathlon”…as well as one of the more difficult races you can do.  This race has been a staple for the WB Tri Team since 2006.  It takes place near Lake San Antonio, just to the northwest of Paso Robles.  It’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so you can forget about the luxuries of home life – you’re camping!  You’ve never seen so many tents!  They are everywhere!  Again, this is a great opportunity to really get to know your teammates, sharing stories and experiences.  There are two major race options, either the Long Course Distance on Saturday or the Olympic Distance on Sunday.  The race courses are beautiful, but quite hilly.  Most triathlons are generally flat, but not at Wildflower.  Your legs are going to take a beating!  It’s all worth it, however, as this race is so well supported.  There are fans cheering you on for much of the race.  Just when you think you can push any more, there’s someone to motivate you (more cowbell!!).  And as you can guess, you have earned another good meal after your efforts at Wildflower.

After Wildflower this year, I needed to try something new.  I had never done a marathon – remember I was a shorter-distance guy.  Having already signed up for the Ironman, however, I figured I had better do a marathon by itself since I was going to have to do one after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike.  I chose the San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon: 1) love San Diego, 2) had heard great things about the race, 3) it fit nicely into my schedule…well kind of nicely.  More accurately, it fell in an empty spot in my schedule.  The tough part was that I only had one month to ramp my mileage up from 6.2 miles (Wildflower) to 26.2 miles.  It’s hardly safe for your body to jump up that quickly, so I only got to 13 miles in my longest practice before doing the race.  This could have been a total disaster, but I was careful not to run too hard and paced quite well.  If you’ve never done a marathon, you’ve probably never seen the pacers.  They have signs on their backs showing their predicted time of finish.  So, you can guess as to the pace that will feel good to you (determined by your practices) and just follow the pacers for as long as you want.  If you feel like they’re too fast or too slow for you, make an adjustment and move to the next group to the front or back of you.  Awesome!  There was no need to keep staring at a watch to stress about pace, you could enjoy the surroundings and hang out with some similarly speedy friends.  I could use these people in my other races!  For much of the run, I felt good, but my legs started to really hate me at around mile 20.  Knowing the finish was less than a 10K away, however, I fought through and completed the distance in just over 3 ½ hours.  Success!

The month after the marathon came the Vineman 70.3 Half Ironman, where disaster struck…

(stay tuned for the 2^nd half of the year, coming later this week!)