Past Journal Entries Season Wrap Up Two Days, Two States, Two Races Sept 2007 France July 2007 On the Road and Racing Happy Day at Wildflower May 2007 March Journal Entry Training in Tempe Happy New Year Racing Locally Racing in Racine California 70.3 Spring Fever |
January 2008
Happy New Year!
Since my last race in November, I have been taking the off-season and down time seriously. After my longest season ever of racing (1 st race in March, last race in November) I was feeling ready for a break. I took November and December and enjoyed lots of family and friend time, catching up on those things that I let slip when my time and attention is focused on triathlon. I went to yoga somewhat regularly, rehabbed some nagging aches and pains, but my main activity was skiing. Dave and I got in a lot of ski time at Mt. Hood Meadows and I’ve skied more this winter (and had more fun doing it!) than I ever have in one winter.
Once the New Year hit, I was physically and mentally rested and ready to jump back to a training routine. I am launching my 2008 training with a 3 part, training trip.
First stop – Tempe, AZ. No skiing distraction here! Just plenty of sunshine to warm my workouts. I had stayed with good friends, The Dray’s, while I became friends with my new bike and while I re-familiarized myself with multiple workouts in one day. It was all about building base volume and appreciating that I was able to head south to warmer weather to do it.
Second stop – LA, where my main task was surviving some of the UCLA masters swim workouts! Besides taking advantage of the outdoor swimming and great workouts, I also jumped into a huge, L.A. size, group bike ride up the Pacific Coast Hwy with the LaGrange team. This was all with my good friend Loren - we worked hard, but had lots of fun at the same time.
We got to check out the UCI Track World Cup races as well. I had never watched live velodrome racing and it was quite exciting, although I must admit that most of the time I didn’t really understand what was going on… until the Time Trial event was on!
Third stop – San Diego, for five days of more swimming, biking and running. I got in some great rides, and swims but my favorite part of the training in and around SD, was the trail running. I didn’t run on the road once while there, and I didn’t run on the same trail twice…now that’s what I call fun training! On one run I managed to get myself onto the stickiest sloppy dirt road/trail in SoCal … there was so much mud caked onto my shoes, it felt like I was running with 5# bricks on each foot!
Another great part about the training in SD was that Andy was able to join me for most of it – he is back at it, following an amazing recovery from a scary bike vs. car accident back in June.
I’m back home now, in stormy, wintery Oregon – back to the reality of indoor swimming and indoor riding. I feel energized though, feeling good about the work I’ve put in over the past 15 days. It’s a great jump start to the ’08 season.
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned … next month I have exciting new sponsorship updates to share!