Wow, so the past few months have been a bit crazy and its almost time for a mid-season break after Wildflower. I have a list of half finished blog entries that are not long relevant. Two races with no reports, and a laundry list of training and life stories that have occurred with nothing to show for it!
The short of it, life is GOOD, but HARD! Work has been a bit much, and training has progressed very well, even with my Achilles issues. The biggest impediment to to my training was my beloved Jeep breaking down, twice! A few thousand dollars later, and three weeks of riding my bike to work, and all is good again and he is cooperating nicely.
Car issues did throw my California 70.3 race off a bit, as the additional mileage took a toll on my legs for the bike. Amazingly my run legs were ready and brought me back into the top 10 in my Age Group for the race which was a big early season boost. Would have loved a better day, but I'll take it considering.
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| Pre Diablo Double |
On to April and lots of fun. My girlfriend and I ran the
Presido 10 together and she did amazing for her first 10k! Running the 10 miler I captured 8th place overall with a 1:02 on tired legs after doing our
M2 Double Diablo climb the day before with 7,000 feet of climbing over 50 miles. Brutal!
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| M2 and Virgilio dueling |
Finally on to this past weekend where our
M2 Training Group decided the amazing weather warranted a little visit to the Pt. Reyes Lighthouse. This ride is a long one, with deceptive difficulty brought on by constant rollers, and extremely rough roads at times. Add to that, some competitive personas going for Strava KOM's, and it can turn ugly quick. Temperatures ranged from 70 degrees at ride start, down to 50's out at the Lighthouse, then back up to 90's on the road back to McInnis Park. An epic day with quite a few battles performed for KOM's and City Limit sprints. Total ride was 85 miles of near race day effort that will come in handy come Wildflower, but I'm not sure it helped for Sunday's Metro Triathlon.
Sunday arrives and my legs recovered nicely. Calves were still hurting a bit from the last weekend's Presidio 10, but I was more worried about holding sustainable efforts on the bike. The swim was cancelled due to some poor water quality readings in Lake Almaden. I had always heard bad things about this lake and avoided swimming in it, but as I don't have my "A" race for the year until August, I figured I'd give it a try. Guess I will never have to deal with swimming in that lake now.
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| Trying to look fierce, lol. |
With a cancelled swim, they had all the 30-39 Males run a 1 mile leadout then onto our bikes. I don't think there was more than 20 seconds of separation between the first 30 athletes, so lets just say it was a crowded first 12 miles of the bike into a headwind. Knowing my run legs would not fully be there, I was hitting the bike hard and a significant pack was forming with a steady headwind. Pushing over 350 watts, I couldn't escape the pack, and as they went through my draft, they would overtake and create a continuous circle, or illegal riding. I made my best efforts to stay clear of drafting, pushing 400 watt blocks to try to escape, but it was impossible. Motor bike pulled up, I was definitely behind someone, and DING, 2 minutes. Was hoping they tagged someone else, but I can't deny I wasn't guilty, pretty much the whole front of the field was.
Finally at the turnaround it was time to drop everyone as we go to enjoy a tailwind, and no more drafting assistance. My buddy Dan and a few others jumped at this chance and the field spread out nicely. We had our climb, which Stefan finally came back to us on, and then the final assault back home. Averaging over 28 MPH for the last 8.5 miles was fun! Felt great about the ride averaging 342 watts and breaking an hour.
Running was a different story. As expected, my calves wouldn't allow me my top end I was hoping for, so instead of risking something worse, I was subjected to cruising the 10k run at 6:30 pace. Finishing up out of the podium was acceptable at 4th place, but it would have been nice to have made it. Big congrats to my training
buddy Dan! He came in 3rd Overall while crushing the run this weekend. He's on an incredible build looking to best my
Texas race from last year and I wish him well.
So, that's my latest. Next up is Wildflower Long Course, and I will actually taper for this race and not do anything too stupid ahead of it. I hope everyone's season has started off great as well, and good luck to everyone at Wildflower! See you down there at the party!
