Clash Daytona- A new PR

It's been a week now since I finished the Clash Daytona half iron triathlon down in Florida, and in the last 2-3 days I've finally started walking normally again.  But the extreme soreness and hobbling around for days afterwards was worth it to do something I wasn't sure I'd be able to do again after such a long break from higher level training and racing- setting a new personal best time in a triathlon. 4 hours and 19 minutes for the 70.3 distance.

This race wasn't an Ironman branded race, but it was every bit as well organized and produced.  There were even fireworks just before the start, that's a new one for me!  And for the entire 56 mile bike course we had a lane to ourselves, totally coned off and separate from car traffic.  That doesn't always happen in an Ironman 70.3 race. 

The course was centered around the Daytona 500 race track- I've never been to a Nascar stadium, car racing just isn't my thing, but I must admit this was pretty cool.  I had no idea how big those tracks are- one lap of the track was ~2.5 miles around, and the 1.2 mile swim portion of the race was held in a rectangular manmade lake entirely contained within the infield of the track.  Logistically, everything was really close together which was nice.  I stayed at a hotel across the street, so it was an easy 5 minute drive to park, and then the parking lot was basically a few minutes walk from the swim, transition area, expo, registration, and finish line.  For the pro race on Friday they did laps on the track for the whole bike and run portions of the race, so it's very spectator friendly and a very fast course.  There are too many age groupers to bike on the track the whole time, so we did one lap and then left the track to do a double out and back on a nearby road.  Aside from the u-turns which slow things down, our course was also very quick- it was almost totally flat and being Florida, the pavement was super smooth.  For the run, we did a couple laps on the track, which they extended to get the full 13.1 distance by also looping us around the infield and under the grandstands, which was the only shaded portion of the run.  This is definitely a race I will consider doing again in the future and would recommend to others.

As for my training leading into the race, it's been pretty good but not great.  I took a few weeks off after the Chicago Tri in August to recover from the season, and have been back at it now for about 3 months leading into this race.  My training this fall was not quite as good or consistent as it was through last winter, spring and summer due to work and other things, but it has still been pretty good overall and the main training goal for the fall was accomplished- improve my run.  In my summer races this year, the run was the weak point every time.  It's the one discipline that hasn't returned to the form I had in my late 20s.  So, that's been my main focus of the past few months... even if the swim and bike training were to fall off a little bit, I was fine with that as long as the run was improving, which it did.  By race day, I had shown recently in training that I can run an open half marathon now in around 1:22-1:23, which I wasn't anywhere close to this summer, or at any time in the past 6 years.  But, what remained to be seen was how close to that I could run after a swim and 56 mile bike ride- triathlon running is not just about running fitness, but also about bike fitness and race execution- pacing, nutrition and hydration over a 4+ hour race.

My run started off great- the first three miles went by quickly and somewhat easily at a ~6:20/mile pace.  Stride was feeling smooth and I had just moved into 3rd AG, 10th overall so motivation was high to continue at the pace, which I felt like I could, at least aerobically.  But then a bit after mile 3 I started feeling a twitching in my quads which got more frequent over the next couple minutes.  Knowing this is a pre-cramp warning sign, I decided to slow down my pace so that I could at least continue running, rather than be forced to walk most of the last 10 miles.  Ultimately, I never fully cramped but my legs were tightening up and getting heavier through the middle of the run. When I was running, it was at ~7:15/mi through the middle miles, plus there were some walk breaks through aid stations during that time, and then I brought it down to ~7:00/mi for the last couple miles.  I was passed by 4 athletes during that time and got bumped off the age group podium, and finished with a run split of 1:33.  While this split didn't quite reflect the running gains I've made this fall, it was a big improvement from the 1:42 I ran in a half iron in 2019, and because the swim (27, 1:15/100yd) and bike (2:14, 25.0 mph) were as good as they were, I was still able to set an overall PR of 4:19, down from my previous best of 4:21. 

So, despite a rough middle few miles of the run, I came away from this race very pleased with how it went and how I've been able to get my fitness back in the past year.  And that didn't come easy... I've had to be very disciplined, consistent, and time-efficient (because coaching and my athletes come first before my own training), not to mention willing to push myself to the limit many times over in workouts, while at the same time being smart about recovering adequately and not over-working myself. (easy=easy, hard=hard) But in the end, about a year and a quarter out from being in the worst shape of my life, I was able to put together the best long course race I've ever done, with clear potential for improvement.  Still a ways to go to match my best short course performance (20/59/35), which in my 20s I was always more competitive at than long course, and who knows if I'll ever get back there, but Daytona showed me that moving forward into the future, if I continue training consistently and am smart about it, there's still a lot of potential for fast racing and PRs.  But more importantly than that, I'm feeling healthier again in the past year, I'm fitter and stronger that I've been in awhile, and I'm having fun doing it.  It was also nice to hear from many of my athletes and other friends before and after the race that were following along- that's a good motivation to keep pushing throughout the race, and I hope that my efforts can help inspire others to work hard and accomplish their goals!

In the past month I've been asked by many "what's next?"  I wanted to wait until after this race to think much about that.  The one thing that I knew beforehand was that I planned to continue training and build on the progress I made this year- I don't want to lose all my fitness again by taking another extended break.  So I'll take a couple easy weeks and then start working again.  But now that this race is in the books, next season's plans are starting to come together.  Because Nationals is coming back to Milwaukee, I'm going to plan for that as my A race for the summer.  I'd also like to race another half iron or two, and attempt to lower my new PR even more.  But if I try to race both short and long course next summer at a high level, one or both will end up compromised, since the training should be different for the two.  So what I'm planning to do at this point is to focus the spring and summer on short course training and racing.  Then after Nationals, I'll shift my training to a long course focus and hit one or two 70.3s in the fall.  Maybe I'll be back to Daytona, but there are also a few other good options I could do.  So in terms of specific races, things are still pretty up in the air other than Nationals, but the big picture season structure seems to be coming together.  So if you're following my Strava, you'll probably see workouts pick back up in a few weeks.  Otherwise, I'll probably check back here with a training update sometime in the spring.  Thanks for reading, and happy training!

One Year Back In It- Age Group Nationals

Well, it's now been about one full year since I abruptly ended my 2 year long off-season and tried to get fit again with a goal of training for Age Group Nationals.  This past weekend was the race, so I thought this would be a good time to check in with an update.

As my last post mentioned, starting back up again after so much time off and fitness lost was a bumpy ride and a humbling experience at first to say the least.  But throughout this past year my training has been more consistent than it's ever been over the course of a year.  I'm happy to report that even since my last post in the spring, that trajectory has mostly continued.  And along with the long term consistency in training has come a gradual, steady improvement in training paces, fitness markers, test sets and race results.

My first triathlon since Ironman 2019 was the Pigman olympic distance race in Cedar Rapids in early June of this year (2022).  I was trying to think back to when my last true olympic distance race was where I raced hard, and couldn't exactly remember.  2019 was all long course, so I probably did one in 2018 but I was not very fit that year so it's not the same kind of effort... I suppose the last time I really raced an olympic distance triathlon when I was fit enough to push hard- close to threshold the whole way- must've been 2016.  So while training had gone well this year, Pigman was a shock to the system... I hadn't done something like that- staying at ~85-95% threshold for around 2 hours- in over 5 years.  But although it felt really hard, it was a good race and I felt strong!  1st 35-39 AG and 5th overall.  My swim was strong, I stayed close to the front group until I lost contact when we rejoined with the sprint athletes toward the end and it got crowded.  On the bike something got stuck to my tire and kept hitting my bike frame every revolution so that was more annoying than anything, maybe a few watts of drag, but the bike was good and I enjoyed the course. Mid 23mph average, was expecting ~24 but that's ok. On the run I was really feeling the length of the race and didn't perform quite as well as I had hoped or thought I would, but it wasn't bad and was good enough to stay in the top 5 overall.

My second race was an olympic distance called the Manitou tri in the Twin Cities area.  This was a small, local, non sanctioned race that I probably wouldn't have known about except that my brother lives in the area so I was looking for what races were around there so I could visit for the weekend, too.  The race started and I was out in front in the swim right away and feeling strong.  It was a really windy day though and the buoys weren't staying in place.  Buoy drift combined with the sun in my face combined with overconfidence resulted in me swimming toward the wrong buoy, thinking it was the turn buoy.  When I got there, I saw the actual turn buoy to my left, ~50-100m away.  So I had to detour over there, go around the buoy, and then swim back to where I had just been, which in all added 100-200m to my swim.  During that time I was passed but I re-caught him soon after.  On the way back in there was more difficulty with figuring out where to go and I came out of the water in 2nd, pretty annoyed with myself for the rookie mistakes.  But practicing transitions pays off, as I passed the race leader in T1 and started the bike in first.  On the bike I was fighting 20mph winds the whole way while riding a disc wheel and 60mm front.  Terrain was mostly open field and sometimes we were riding alongside lakes.  So in other words, there was not much to block the wind and I was getting hammered trying to stay in the aerobars. My upper body has never been so tense on the bike in a race. There were a few times I had to back off the gas just so that I wouldn't get blown off the road.  I suppose I could've just gotten out of the aero position at times to have more stability like I do on windy training days, but that would've been slower, so not going to happen unless I really felt like I would crash otherwise.  Despite the hard conditions I finished the bike with a 24.0mph average, which I was very happy about.  On the run, I went out strong and pushed it to the turnaround and a little bit afterward.  On the way back I saw that I had a ~10 minute lead on 2nd place, so realizing that he would need to run under 4 minute miles the rest of the way to catch me, I decided to jog in the last 2.5 miles back to the finish.  After this race, confidence was high going into July and my final training push toward Nationals.

My brother and his family came out to watch the race, which added some extra fun to the weekend :)

Early in July I had my first and only real training hiccup of the season.  Long story short, I strained my calf muscle during/after a track workout.  Over the past year I had gradually built my running mileage up, and for the prior two months I had been sustaining it at ~20-25 miles per week on non-recovery weeks.  But, after this, July's weekly running mileage had to stay around 3-4 (after one week of zero running) in order to allow the calf to heal up to be ready for Nationals.  Definitely a bummer, but the important thing with stuff like this is that you don't panic, don't get down on yourself, and make the necessary adjustments to make the best of a less than ideal situation.  Dwelling on the negative will do nothing good for you, it'll just make things worse, you can't change what happened, so focus on what you can do from here and move forward. For me, besides dropping the running mileage out of necessity, this also meant a lot of muscle work such as massage, dry needling and A.R.T (active release technique).  While the running mileage was down I increased my biking mileage to keep my overall workload similar.  After a few weeks of all this, it was go time for Nationals and it felt as if my leg would probably hold up for the race.  As long as it did and I didn't end up walking on the run, I was confident that I could perform well and push myself from start to finish.  So that was the goal going into the race.  Before the injury I was aiming for a top-10 age group finish and thought it would be doable if nothing went wrong and I didn't make any mistakes.  Now I was a little less confident but still considered that it could be possible on a good day.  It was only a 5km run after all, as I was going to be doing the sprint distance.

Race weekend came and I did some spectating in the morning of the olympic distance race, as a number of my SBR athletes and other friends were competing.  My athletes did great, and this was an exciting boost going into my race the next day.  Though, there was a lot of uncertainty about the weather forecast.  It looked like Milwaukee was going to get hit by storms overnight and for much of the next day.  I went to sleep the night before not knowing if we were going to have a race at all the next day, but ready to make do with whatever the day brought.  I woke up at 5am and it was raining but not bad.  USAT had just announced that the sprint triathlon would be changed to a "Super Sprint" meaning the already short distances were being cut in about half.  This was done so that we would be done before the big storms rolled in, as it looked like we were going to get a window of decent weather.  The race would be a 385m swim, 6.7 or 6.8 mile bike (depending on which gps mapping app you ask, USAT's app was way off), and a 2.5km run.  I've never raced a triathlon this short, though my collegiate athletes have done even shorter ones as part of the mixed team relay at collegiate Nationals.  So theoretically I had a good idea of what I needed to do and how to adjust, but I haven't experienced it before myself as an athlete.  I'm a bit better suited to the full sprint or olympic distance, the super sprint is a little short for me, but I was still excited to go for it and see what I could do.  Ultimately, I ended up having a really good race! 34 minutes of red-lining and it was all over.

The swim went really well and I couldn't believe how quickly it went by.  It felt like we had just started and I was already getting out of the water.  I was 2nd out of the water in my age group which is way above anything I've ever been able to do at Nationals.  I was quickly introduced to the intensity of the super sprint though, and as I was trying to get my heart rate settled and body ready to bike as I went methodically through the transition area, many of my competitors blew by me in what looked like a full sprint.  That was a wake up call, there was going to be no letting up on the gas the rest of the way, no reprieves in the effort except for the one brief downhill after the turnaround on the bike.  The bike course was flat, fast, smooth roads and really fun.  Wish I could've been on it longer.  I loved the completely closed course with two lanes in each direction.  It was under 7 miles so of course it was going to be quick, but I've never ridden that fast before.  My average speed was right about 26.0mph, a full 1mph faster than I've ever done for an average speed in a triathlon.  By the turnaround on the bike I had moved back into 2nd 35-39, but on the way back is when I realized that I had gone out harder than I was able to sustain.  I still kept a good pace on the way back, but was passed by 3 riders I had gone by earlier, and came into transition in 5th.  In T2 another two sprinted by me, and I started the run in 7th, though only about a minute behind 2nd (to give you an idea of how tight and competitive this race was) and I had a few more hot on my heels.  It was going to be a painful 2.5km run, but I was ready to give it what I had and push through to the end.  The run started off really well and for the first half I was keeping a strong, sub-6 minute mile pace.  Most importantly, my calf felt great, I didn't notice it at all so very early into the run I was confident that it wasn't going to be a problem.  After the turnaround I did start having some side stitch and lower back tightness, and the effort was getting to me... my heart rate and breathing couldn't have been higher, so my second half run pace dropped off a bit.  The guys in front of me were all running too fast to catch, but at the turnaround I saw a number of guys behind me driving hard and that kept me motived to keep pushing through the discomfort to try to hold them off.  In the end, one of them caught me but I was able to hang on to 8th place 35-39!  This was my first top-10 finish at Nationals, which was an exciting way to end the weekend at the awards ceremony.

It's been a nice few days of recovering since the race.  I have one more race this summer, the Chicago Triathlon, so the next two weeks are going to be back to the grindstone, and then I'll be able to relax for a few weeks and recover from the season.  But I don't intend to take another massive break or lose the fitness I've gained over the past year.  I don't yet know exactly what next season will look like, but my intention is to build on the gains I've made this past year.  I'm very happy with the progress I've made and would rather not lose it again...  This spring and summer in the pool I've set lifetime personal best times in the 500, 1500, 1.2 and 2.4 distances.  My open water swimming is now at or better than it's ever been (when I don't go the wrong way, ha), and same with cycling.  This summer I put down the best FTP test of my life at 310w (4.5w/kg).  I'm still working on improving my aero position so there's speed to be gained there as well.  Running is still ~20-30 seconds/mile off my all time bests from ~8-10 years ago, but it has progressed a lot over the past year and is stronger than it's been in a long time. So all in all, a year out from being in the worst shape of my adult life, I'd say I'm very pleased with the progress I've made.  For those newer to the sport who are reading this- the only reason I was able to go from (relatively) out of shape to top 10 Nationals AG in one year is because I've been at this level before, which took me over a decade of work to get to the first time around.  So I don't want anyone to read this and think "what am I doing wrong? I'm not improving that quickly" If you're seeing improvement over time (or if you're an older athlete, maintenance over time is relative improvement vs your age group) then that's great!  You're doing something right.  You can't jump from point A to Z without going to B, then C, then D, etc.  Fitness improvement takes time and patience and often from one day or week to the next you may not notice much change, but good, smart training done consistently over time will almost always yield good results provided you're giving your body what it needs to adapt (good nutrition, sleep, adequate recovery, not overly stressed, etc).  And don't forget to have fun along the way and enjoy the process!  Regardless of race results, I'm blessed to be able to do something I enjoy, can do alongside friends and keeps me healthy. 

I guess that's it for now.  Thanks for reading.  Next update on here will likely be sometime this fall or winter. Good luck to everyone with their end of season races coming up!

Hello again

Well, it's been awhile.  It looks like my last post on here was back in early 2015 as a 29 year old.  Now I'm 36, so re-reading all of these posts a couple weeks ago was pretty entertaining to say the least.  Sometimes I laughed, other times I cringed, and a few times times I felt pretty impressed with some of my younger self's insights into triathlon training and racing (my break away from and splitting up of the bike pack at the non-drafting Miami 70.3 was tactical genius, can't believe I actually thought of that and then pulled it off). 

I "found" this blog again when I was bored during a zone 2 trainer ride a couple weeks ago, and since I'm training again this year, and at the nudging of some of you, I'm resurrecting it.  

So it's been seven years... where to begin?  I guess I'll start where I left off- my last post was made at the beginning of my second year as a pro card carrying triathlete.  My first pro year had some ups and downs, but due to lack of consistency in my training, I didn't quite match the level of performance that I had achieved in 2013, the year I qualified for elite status.  As my last post indicated, I was making improvements early on in 2015, and although my times weren't where I wanted them to be or where they had been, I was trending upward and improving, and mentally I was optimistic about where the season might go.  The last sentence of my final post was:

"God willing, I should be able to stay on track in 2015 and we'll see where things go."

Well, God may or may not have been willing, but I wasn't.  Plans soon changed- 2015 and 2016 were big years outside of my athletic life.  I had just bought a house, and a few months after writing my last post on here, I got engaged.  I married Sharon in November 2015 and in February of 2016 I purchased the majority share of SBR Coaching (now SBR Endurance Performance Center) and became a small business owner.  These were all great things that I was very happy about!  The business purchase especially was an opportunity that had not been on my radar prior to that time.  I had been coaching part-time for a number of years as some of my old posts chronicle, and was really enjoying it.  I was also starting to see more of a future as a coach than as an athlete.  I didn't want to give up training and racing as a triathlete, but I was seeing that if I was going to continue to improve as an elite triathlete and continue to move up in the ranks, it was going to take a commitment level that I was no longer sure I was willing to make.  On one hand, I could totally dedicate myself as an athlete and maybe I would have the potential to eventually become a middle of the pack pro triathlete. Maybe.  And honestly, that would be pretty awesome, but it would also come at a cost in terms of time, energy and giving up other things that were becoming more important to me than they had been through most of my 20s.  About to turn 30, being newly engaged, and looking at a potential business purchase, I wasn't sure exactly what degree of commitment to triathlon training I was willing to continue to make.  Long story short, I chose to prioritize family and my coaching career, and looking back on that decision now, I'm glad that's the decision I made.  I'm also glad that I didn't quit training and racing, either (I thought about it a couple times).  I had two more years left of elite eligibility before I had to either meet re-qualification or give up pro status.  My approach to racing those two years was to train as best I could without sacrificing other important areas in my life and to have fun racing, even if the difference between a good day and bad day was either second to last or dead last pro finisher.  I have to say it was fun to tread water next to Hunter Kemper and Greg Bennett before the gun went off to start the Chicago triathlon, even if I only stayed with them for the first 50 yards of the swim.

As the last few months of my third year of elite eligibility in 2016 were coming around, I made one last training push to see if I could sneak in a re-qualification at the Austin 70.3 (I had to finish within 8% of the winning pro's time).  A couple weeks before the race, fitness testing indicated that I was probably at my highest level in the previous three years, and second only to my last season as an age grouper when I had initially qualified.  It was a long shot, but I was feeling a little bit optimistic with training having gone really well the prior couple months.  But then a few days before I was scheduled to travel to Austin, I got sick.  I've only been sick a total of 3 times in the past 10 years, so this was not great timing.  Or maybe it was... I was in no shape to race so I stayed in Madison and followed the race online.  Turns out the swim got cancelled because of heavy fog... no chance I would've re-qualified without the swim.  Getting sick saved me significant money as I was able to get a portion of my travel expenses refunded.  But not racing meant that as of the end of 2016 my elite status expired.

A quick summary of the years between then and now:

2017- The first year of my second round as an age group triathlete.  I might have done one or two sprint races for fun, I can't remember.  I didn't really train at all that year.  I was much more focused on growing SBR and helping my athletes achieve their goals.  In the coaching arena, this was a very successful year.

2018- After taking pretty much a full year off of training, I thought it was time to make a return to some racing, but knowing full well it was going to be different than before.  Fitness was at an all time low to start the season, especially running.  I ran so infrequently that every time I did actually run a couple easy miles my legs would start itching after 10 minutes.  As the 2018 season went on, I actually started feeling pretty good on the swim and bike.  I really didn't have time to train well in all three disciplines, and I just didn't feel like running that year, so I put time into the swim and bike and just didn't run, and didn't care.  I signed up for the Door County half iron that year because it's a fun race and I like the course (minus the bluff hill, but we can't always have everything we want in life). I think the run that day doubled my total running miles that entire season up to that point.  My results reflected the relative effort I put into my training each of the disciplines.  Splits were a 29:04 swim, 2:21:19 bike, and a 1:58:50 run. I came off the bike ~10th and finished 24th, which was honestly better than I thought I'd do, and my final time was about 30 minutes slower than I had raced this course years before.  But aside from the last 5km when I was dying up on the bluff, I really enjoyed racing again.  And I surprised myself with the level I was able to bring my swim and bike back to after taking a year off in 2017.  I think I raced a few other times that year, but Door County sticks out as both the highlight and turning point, when my joy of racing started to re-emerge, and my belief that if I trained properly I still had the ability to race at the level I had in the past.

2019- One of the best parts about getting involved at SBR is the community that's been built there.  Yes they are my athletes but I consider many of them my friends as well.  At the convincing of some of my athletes I signed up for Ironman Wisconsin, and training started that February.  This would be the second Ironman of my life- my first one had been as a 20 year old college junior in 2006.  That first Ironman I finished in 11:39.  While Ironman was the big race looming over everything in 2019, I raced a full season that year and tried to (and I did) appreciate each one.  Wisconsin 70.3, Door County half iron, the Loop Pursuit Triathlon, and then Ironman in September.  Performance-wise, each race got better than the one before it.  The season started like 2018- pretty strong swim and bike followed by a sub-par run.  But with each race the run got better.  My Door County overall time in 2019 was ~20 minutes better than I did it in 2018 (27/2:22/1:42), and I took my first race win in many years at the Loop Pursuit, finishing on SBR's front lawn in front of a "home crowd".  Then came Ironman Wisconsin... I could write a whole post about this race alone, but long story short I had a fantastic day, likely my best long course race ever, and finished in 9:53.  In one of my blog posts here from years ago I wrote about how when I PR I sometimes imagine what I would have the time to do while waiting for my former self to finish.  At the time I joked that I was going to bring a book to my next Ironman... well with an almost 2 hour time drop between 2006 and 2019, that turned out to be a pretty accurate statement.  I also loved doing the race in Madison and seeing family and friends throughout the entire day.  Lastly I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout-out to my friend Garrett Nelson for training and racing with me throughout the whole 2019 season.  Garrett is one of my new friends I've met through SBR and was a big part of my success that year as we did much of our training together, and he kept me motivated. (Garrett is a great athlete who has had strong results already and has quite a bit of potential in both long distance triathlon and ultra endurance running- I look forward to following his race at Kona this upcoming year)  Honestly, the 2019 season was probably the most I'd ever enjoyed the sport as an athlete, both the training and racing.  Not that I hadn't in prior years, I loved the training and racing, but with the SBR community and training partners that year, this was a year of training and racing that I won't ever forget.

2020- Covid

2021- An intentional 6 month off-season following Ironman turned into almost two full years off due to covid related reasons.  Races were returning in 2021 but I didn't do any of them.  Literally my only exercise in the first half of 2021 was a 300yd lifeguard recertification test-out swim in February, and riding the warmup and cool down twice a week with my group cycling class at SBR in the summer.  Aside from that zero swimming, biking or running was done up until July 2021 when I hopped in the pool a couple times.  I had started doing some strength training twice a week back in the spring of 2021 because after over a year of not exercising I was starting to actually feel somewhat unhealthy for the first time in my life in day to day life. But other than that, nothing.  I can't explain why, but in August 2021 a switch flipped inside of me.  I decided I was going to do Age Group Nationals 2022 which is happening in Milwaukee, and with a year to prepare I started training again.  If I thought my fitness was poor at the start of 2018 after taking a year off, this was a whole other level entirely.  When I jumped in the pool the first time last July I swam 100 yards in 1:30 but needed 2 minutes of rest to repeat it.  After 5x100, each one getting slower than the prior one, I had to get out.  FTP on the bike had dropped 100 watts from 2019 Ironman, from just over 300 to just barely over 200.  I had to walk multiple times on my first casual 3 mile run, which was done at a slower pace than I had averaged in the 2019 Ironman run. Re-starting training in August was rough, but gradually things started to feel better.  Last September I got a Strava account and have been logging every workout there, so if you want to know how my training has gone since then, you can follow me on Strava.  After a few re-starting related hiccups, training has been going extremely well- I've been steadily improving and the past 7 months have been the most consistent and well executed training months of my life. I had perhaps my best single week of training of my triathlon career this past January with the UW Tri team in Destin. I'm not at personal best levels yet with my workouts but to my surprise I'm actually starting to close in on some of them.  Now that I am a more experienced business owner and coach I am better able to split my time between work and training, where as earlier as a coach I would not have been as good at time management between the two.  So we'll see where this year goes.  I want to enjoy the process, enjoy the training and racing, and do my best but at the end of the day I'm blessed to be able to do this.  I think that's all for now- I'll update the pictures etc on here soon, and I'll probably check in again with another post, hopefully it won't take another 7 years before my next one.