After my 3 month hiatus to replenish funds working in Tulsa I am now back in my favorite winter training destination of Clermont, Florida, to pick up where I left off and resume full-time training in preparation for my first Ironman in hot, humid Texas. I wish I could tell you all that work sucked and I couldn't wait to get done with it and move on, but the truth is... I loved it. I was surrounded by a great group of knowledgeable engineers that were a pleasure to work with and I got to learn a ton of really cool engineering stuff as well as relearn and finally understand a lot that I had forgotten in college. On top of that, I picked up latin dancing in the form of Salsa and Argentine Tango. Knowing myself as well as I do, that could be the next big thing I get really competitive with and go all in to.
Some things have changed over the winter. On one hour per day average training, I have gotten faster in the pool and on the bike. Quite significantly so. All of the rest I was getting finally caught up with me and has allowed my body to recover and lock in all the gains made from training hard full-time all last year. It was something I knew was possible but did not consider probable because of the mentality of more is always better that gets stuck into the head of an endurance athlete. The run is even not far off my peak and is something I know will come back even faster with the increased volume, as it always does every year.
Another thing that is new... Journey To Go Pro is now an officially registered Wyoming LLC! The business is currently funded through my engineering consulting work but may incorporate fitness and triathlon consulting as well on down the road. Also planning to give back and create a team at some point to sponsor whenever I find a few likeminded individuals who are doing something similar (crazy) and trying to make that jump from elite AG to pro (or regular AG to pro like me...), yet do not quite have the resources I have to make it work without help. Because of this, though I am personally still not accepting sponsors of any kind, I will soon be considering sponsors for this team whenever it starts to get off the ground.
Back to training, I am going very swim/bike heavy for the moment, as the race down in Texas will require some good swim speed to have a chance at getting away from the chaos before the first turn of the narrow mass start at Ironman Texas. The goals for improving swimming involve consistency, master's swims, and more power. The plan is to swim every day, even if it's just 30' easy, hard masters swims twice per week, and to continue to work on pulling harder and faster through the water to gain the strength needed for faster swimming.
Since I believe running off the bike at the level I am at is more about bike fitness and general endurance (along with nutrition) than run fitness, I will keep my run mileage relatively low until the summer months in Boulder where all those great running trails are, and really focus on the bike workouts here in Clermont. I am currently transitioning from the shorter intense threshold/interval focused workouts of winter to longer endurance/tempo focused workouts to gain the endurance I will need for Ironman.
That about wraps it up. Look for more posts soon, as I have time to write again.
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