Life of an Age-Grouper

The time has finally arrived when I can start to really push my limiters and stretch my comfort zone without fear of injury. The timing is ideal as I now have just over a month to really enhance my fitness and fine tune my race game plan. For the past month I have stuck to the game plan as mentioned in my previous blog. The intensity and duration of my bike and running sessions have certainly increased. I've been reaping the rewards of my labor on the bike. My endurance has started to take off along with my power. What I have found great gratification in has been the harmony I found with my pedal stroke. I have achieved an entirely new level of smoothness and grace while pedaling. I no longer need to say to myself "smooth circles" every single second, of every minute, of every hour, of every ride. It's an extremely calming, tranquil and zen feeling to have my stroke so dialed. I'm not sure how to describe my running. Every run session prescribed to me since...

With the focus as of late on my run and bike I have spent little time, dare I say neglected, my swim?  I'm very aware of the hard work and time it took me to get my splits down to 1:28/100yds over the winter and spring months so heading into this morning's TT I had limited expectations.  In reality my goal was to swim as evenly as possible and to maintain perfect form. The warm up went well despite the crowded pool, senior aerobics/walkers in every lane.  I then gave myself a once over, I was both mentally and physically ready for this TT.  Hit the reset button on my watch, took a deep breath, hit start and went to work. The first 100 I destroyed, which isn't a good thing.  I practically laughed at the time because despite feeling great and relaxed I knew there was no way in hell I had made that much progress.  As a result I once again dialed back my effort with the intentions of spreading it out evenly for the next 900 yards.  My splits for m...

Its been quite some time since I have tested my threshold on the bike.  Actually the last time was 3/10/12 which was prior to getting sick and during a period of solid training.  With less than two months of training left before Miamiman it is very important that I'm as efficient as possible while training which made testing on the bike pertinent. Standard procedure for the threshold test; a solid 40min warm up then an all-out effort for 20 minutes. There were mixed emotions heading into this test. I was excited to test so that I could get my threshold number and get on with my training. With only 6 weeks of training after 2 months off I was apprehensive.  How would I stack up to my former self?  Would I be any where close to those numbers? I went back and forth about going back into my blog and training logs to dig up the stats on my last test.  I decided not to in order to avoid any undo stress.  This was a new me, a healthy me, a new test, a new star...

Starting with my first day with Organic Endurance I have been very clear with my triathlon related goals. I have established goals ranging from short to long term with the ultimate objective of not only reaching these goals but successfully breaking through them and re-establishing new ones. Now that I'm back on track and operating at 100% it's full tilt towards achieving these goals. Six weeks have passed, with a 10 day vacation mixed in, and i have finally reached a level of fitness where I can start to push my aerobic and anaerobic limitations. My speed and power have rebounded the quickest with my endurance trailing not too far behind. This was most evident in my run session yesterday. Leading into this run I was a bit nervous and excited due to the specifics of the session. After a brief warm up I was to run in 7 minute continuous blocks with the goal of negative splitting each block. This run session was certainly the most specific and most intense since my episode wi...

I took off for Europe on August 21st with my lovely wife, Melissa.  This trip was planned awhile back with the idea that it would be a celebration to the end of my triathlon season and the end of the summer.  While it was an amazing way to end the summer it was hardly a celebration.  Right up until I jumped on the plane I had been working extremely hard and putting in the time to remind my body what hard work was all about.  I was extremely happy to have a couple days off because I was getting fairly sore and need time to absorb the training abuse.  After a few days in Europe I had properly recovered and was itching to get going again.  However this was a vacation with Melissa and NOT a time to train so I kept my urges to myself and gave Melissa my undivided attention.  As a fail safe I purposely did not pack any exercise gear so that there would be no opportunity to wake up early and bang out a swim/bike/run.  As a c...