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.
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!
