Sunday, September 26, 2010

I'm running again!

After bruising my toes in the Austin Triathlon and taking 2 weeks off, I got back to running this week. I ran 2.5 miles on Monday night, 4 miles on Friday morning, and then 6.5 miles this morning on Town Lake. After taking 2 weeks off I thought my hip flexor would be a lot better. It isn't. I ran on Monday and my hip flexor was hurting pretty much the entire time and it was fairly bad, too. It was actually more painful than before taking off the 2 weeks. After the run, my hip flexor hurt on Tuesday and Wednesday but was feeling a bit better on Thursday. Ran again on Friday a hip flexor hurt bad for first mile and then the pain lessened a lot but I still felt it. Today, I had the same thing going on but by the end of the run, the pain had gone away almost entirely and I was running about an 8:30 mile. I see my doc tomorrow to assess the situation but I think I'm back to running. I've lost a bit of fitness though which sucks, but it happens. The good thing is that it seems that the weather is about to change and it is going to get a lot cooler soon.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

My slowest Oly time ever and I'm very happy with it

Well, I did the Austin Triathlon this past Monday. I was a bit intimidated by it because my training this year has been really inconsistent except for the last month or so. Last year, I felt the same way but I dropped down from the Oly to the sprint and ended up with 3rd in my AG. This year, I actually felt worse but decided to tough it out and use it as motivation.

I did taper a bit for this workout but didn't really do much carb loading. Last week's workouts were definitely lighter and I did do a tune up on Sunday. Got everything done on Sunday and was up most of the weekend getting ready for a cookout on Monday. So, it wasn't the ideal taper that I would try to do for an A race. Got up and went to the race site on Monday morning. Said hi to a lot of people and did a lot of waiting around. Wandered down to the water and put on my wetsuit for the first time in over a year. Got in the water and it actually felt great at about a nice 73* or so. I thought it was near perfect water temp for racing. I swam and didn't get much traffic and just tried to take it fairly easy. It was actually a pretty relaxed and comfortable swim for me. I tried staying on feet the entire time but every time I caught up with a pair, they weren't going fast enough for me. I need to work on starting out faster and settling in to stay with someone to draft off of. Time was 27:30 which I was happy with since I'm swimming about twice a month for the last 9 months or so.

In and out of T1 fine. Took awhile to get my wetsuit off though so lost time there but no other issues otherwise. I did it in about 2:35 which was fairly fast for the rest of my AG but not in the top by any means. I do remember that I was running faster than others with my bike. A lot of people forget that transitions are still part of the race and take their time. I actually race them.

Got on the bike and there is the usual bunching of people right after the dismount line. They annoy me. I got past them and got going on the bike. It wasn't until about a mile into the bike that I had my feet in my shoes though. I just wanted to get going comfortably before trying it. However, I do need to try to the rubber band trick with my shoes to get going a few seconds faster. The bike was fun and I really like that course. It wasn't too crowded the first couple of laps either. I think I went a bit too fast on the 1st lap and tried to dial it back a bit on the 2nd. On the 3rd, it started raining. I took it cautiously around the turns but dialed it up a bit on the straights. There were a few parts where people were taking bad lines and I tried riding the tangents and there were definitely a few spots where I took much better lines that other racers. Finished with a time of 1:07:51 for 21.9mph according to the race results. Oh, I didn't have areo wheels or an areo helmet.

T2 was meh as well. I got into T2 and realized that there weren't many bikes around me at all. My socks went on fairly quickly this time but I still need to figure out how to do these races without socks. Got running and could've been going a bit faster.

Got on the run and checked my time and was shocked. I was just at 1:40 or so which left me 0:50 to break 2:30. Before the race, I was thinking that I would've been happy with anything under 2:40 or 2:45 due to my lack of fitness. Well, this was my longest race of the year by far and I just went fairly strong on the bike and I haven't done many brick runs nor running in the heat and humidity, but let's give it a shot anyways. At first, it felt like I was running 9:00/mile but I clocked in an 8:06 for the first mile and I felt good. It was hot and humid but I still kept going. I just remember the entire run that I tried to keep my form going which will make my coach happy. I noticed a few times where I was letting my body get upright, tilting my head back, and shuffling my feet and tried to stop that immediately. I got through the 1st loop and was still on pace for a sub-2:30 race but was waiting for the wheels to fall off at any moment. I thought they would at around Mile 5 when I clocked a 8:45 mile, but I had only 1 mile left to go so I turned it up a bit the best that I could. Crossed the line at 2:29:02 with a run time of 49:30.

Shit, I broke 2:30! I was ecstatic because this was way better than I was hoping to do. I guess this race really reinforces that I race much better than I train. My bike and run splits were faster this race than any other race this year and this was my longest race. I will also say that this was probably my most intelligent race too since I raced the tangents whenever I could. My GPS watch said that the run course was only 5.92 miles compared to the 6.21 miles an official 10K is. Either the distance was off or running the tangents on a twisty course like that really, really adds up.

But I finished, I was very happy wit my slowest Oly ever, and I can't wait for the next one.

Weekly run mileage: 13 miles
Asics mileage: 231.5 miles
 

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