May 13th, 2008 Busy Day: I’m finally starting to feel better after having a cold these past few days. Today flew by and was filled with tons of triathlon-related activities. It started at 8:30 AM on the track for some 400s. Jarrod was doing a lot more because he’s not racing this weekend, so I ran with him as he was finishing up. It was cold and windy this morning, but I hit some fast times. I didn’t feel incredibly smooth doing them but I get ‘em done, which is the important thing. After that Jarrod had a photo shoot with him and some Wheaties boxes. The photographer was clueless and was all like “So are you like going to the Olympics or something?” Duhhhhh! Triathletes get no love…
After that I took a nap and thought I overslept but it was only like 12:30 when I woke up, so I put on my cycling clothes and Alicia and I went out on the bike for some 2 minute power intervals. I just got an SRM, the sweetest power tool ever. Every ride is exciting with power. I was hitting some mega watts on those intervals and was quite satisfied.
With my workouts done for the day I headed over to Concord to get a massage at 3 PM with our masseuse Andrew. He’s really good and works on us for free, so thanks Andrew – you’re the best! I drove to Fastsplits after the massage to get a bike fit at 5 PM. Fastsplits is hooking me up with a brand new BMC TT02 “Time Machine”. I am now officially completely aero. I’ll be heading into Memphis in May this weekend with a new TT bike, aero helmet, deep dish wheels – I can’t wait to see if all this technology really translates into faster bike splits. It better! But if not it’s no big deal because it makes you look really cool.
On a semi-related note, I’ve really enjoyed swimming with Minuteman Masters lately because Coach Rich is playing my “Booty Mix” CD (version 2.3) and it makes practice a ton more fun. Also, I would hypothesize that the Booty Mix increases fitness as it leads to uncontrollable dancing during rest intervals. That is all.
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May 11th, 2008: It's been way too long since my last update, and I apologize for that. I've put in 2 tough weeks of training and have been exhausted almost all the time, which has probably contributed to my lack of updates. I have moved out of my parents' attic and into Jarrod and Alicia's basement in Maynard, MA. It's really an awesome place for training. The riding is really good in the area, and there are great running trails at the end of our street. We're also close to TC's fitness club where we do our lifting. In other news, I raced the Sudbury sprint triathlon today. It was a 400 yard pool swim, 7 mile bike, and 2.3 mile run. Jarrod and I went 1-2; our times were 33:26, 33:27. It was a close one! Alicia was easily the 1st overall female. Also racing were Jarrod's little brother Jake and a Team Vortex teammate Steve Wright - two young guys with really bright futures in triathlon. More to come…
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April 28th, 2008: Back to Lowell, MA: Hello All, It’s been a weird past few days leaving the good old 80-degree-and-sunny Chula Vista OTC and returning home to mid-40s-and-raining Massachusetts. I’m finally starting to feel better again and have gotten back into some fairly intense training. Yesterday was my first full day home, and still being on California time I slept in until noon. I got in a solid 4500 yd swim workout at the YMCA and a moderate 7 mile run. Today I got up around 10 AM and was supposed to go for a two hour ride, but after looking outside I decided to call my coach, TC, and tell him to bust out the trainer because I was coming down to Marlboro for a 90 minute indoor spin. TC then took me through my in-season lifting routine. I’m pretty imbalanced doing some of these new exercises, but I’m sure after 1 or 2 sessions I’ll get the hang of it. So I basically have a hard 2.5 week block before taking a few easy days and racing Memphis in May. I may throw in the Sudbury Sprint triathlon on May 11th (Jarrod signed me up). But I’ll likely just train through that one… In other news, our kitchen is currently being remodeled and is
completely destroyed at the moment. We’ve turned our dining
room into an ad-hoc kitchen – various food-related appliances
are strewn about everywhere, so cooking hearty meals here is tough.
I busted out the George Foreman grill and have made some decent
grilled cheese sandwiches on it, but it doesn’t compare at
all to the panini-press at the OTC. (I’m bugging my parents
to get one of those). For now I’ll just have to get used to
the microwave/toaster/crock pot menu… I’m also going
to start working a few hours per week at Fastsplits to earn a little
extra cash.
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April 25th, 2008: Big news! I'm in Sports
Illustrated (oh yeah, and Jarrod is on the Wheaties box):
I guess my friend submitted me to "Faces in the Crowd"
for SI and it was chosen for this week. Here is the link: Also, Jarrod is the 2nd triathlete ever (behind Hunter Kemper) to be featured on the Wheaties box. I've known about this for a long time but was sworn to secrecy. Jarrod made a bet with our swim coach that if he was ever on the Wheaties box he'd have to buy Jarrod a brand new personal pace clock. Of course this bet was made after the Wheaties deal was finalized. He got you good coach Rich...
And on a random note, I can't believe that Matt Reed won trials last week. I was part of a trials "pick 'em" pool where everyone submitted what they thought would be the finishing order for all 10 men. We had a point system and everything, and of course I won - but I had Matt reed finishing 3rd... I'm so stoked for him and I think he really deserves it. The fact that he was the top ranked American on the World Cup circuit last year has gone way overlooked. I really believe he's the strongest cyclist in the ITU right now, and if he continues to match that with blazzing runs off the bike then I can't wait to see how he does in Beijing.
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April 24th, 2008: Xterra Photoshoot & Going Organic: The other day Jarrod had a photoshoot with his wetsuit sponsor, Xterra. Since I happen to be with him and currently don't have an official wetsuit sponsor... Jarrod was able to talk to a few people and get me in the photoshoot, too. I got a free wetsuit out of it and will hpoefully continue to work with Xterra wetsuits in the future! Behind the scenes photos from my cell phone camera:
In other recent news, Jarrod and I have decided to "go organic" in an attempt to be more healthy. We went to Trader Joes the other day and got some all organic snacks - animal crackers, veggie chips, chocolate, etc. I'd probably be feeling more healthy already except for these stupid stomach problems...
And finally, I owe a long overdue pulic congrats to Sexton for winning the Collegiate National Championships in Tuscaloosa, AL. I've been training with him for the past 2 months and knew he was ready to have a great race. Congrats steve, you earned it:
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April 23rd, 2008: My Mazatlan Distaster: I went down to Mazatlan, Mexico this past weekend for the Pan-American Championships, and I had one of the most unique, disastrous experiences I've ever had at a triathlon. Leading up to the race I was feeling super good and ready to race. I had gotten over my initial nervousness of the 8-10 foot swells in the ocean by going out with a large group the day before the race and practicing swimming in this epic surf. Eventually I learned how to dodge and body-surf these giant waves and was actually looking forward to getting out there and racing in that stuff. So the day before my race some of the USAT junior coaches asked me if I would be willing to let one of the juniors race on my bike because his hadn't arrived (the junior race was several hours before mine). I said it would be okay. Later on that evening the missing bike was found so I thought I was in the clear, but another junior's bike had been damaged in transit and was deemed unrideable. So at sometime around 11 PM some coaches came to my room, knocked on my door, woke me up, and asked if they could take my bike. I said yes in a half-asleep state of confusion. Fast forward to about 8 AM when Jarrod and I are having breakfast. All of a sudden somebody informs me that this junior to whom I lent my bike had crashed on it… twice, and now my bike was unrideable. I tried not to panic. I was told I would be able to ride Willy Pickart's bike, a junior who is roughly my size. His frame was still too small for me, but the coaches set it up on the trainer and tried to find a position that would suit me. This bike also had SRAM components, which I've never used before. So I set up this bike in transition with a compromised position and shifting I wasn't used to.
The race started and we dashed off into the giant waves. (I learned earlier in the morning that 8 of the junior athletes had to be rescued by lifeguards during their swim). I got thrown around a bit and had a little trouble getting out past the break. I was farther back than I should've been but tried not to panic because I am confident with my current biking abilities. I finally exited the water and was relived to get out. I came out close to Arturo Garza, a Mexican guy that I knew would be in the front pack, so I thought I would be able to still finish well with this sub-par swim. As soon as I got on my modified bike I knew things weren't right. My position was way too hunched to generate a lot of power. I couldn't get on my aerobars because my arms were just too long despite my seat being as far back as it could go. The only decent position I could find to ride hard and have any control was to be on my drop bars. It felt dangerous to get out of my saddle to sprint. This position eliminated any chances I had of drinking on the bike or taking in any of my gels, and with the Mazatlan heat it wasn't going to be a pleasant 40k. Despite everything I was still at the front of my bike pack doing most of the work. Suddenly my seat post slid several inches down into my frame and my seat sloped forward. It was miserable. I tried to press on for a couple more laps but eventually dropped out a little past lap #5 of 8. I was pretty upset after the race, but luckily I had an amazing support group of friends and coaches to cheer me up. The USAT staff recognized that I hadn't gotten a fair chance to really race out there, and I will most likely be reimbursed for all my travel expenses. It's really nice to have a federation that cares as much about their athletes to do something like this, so I am very grateful. My bad luck has seemed to continue back in Chula Vista as I've had some pretty bad stomach pains ever since I returned from Mexico. That has kind of derailed my training for the time-being, but I'm just glad I'm getting all this bad luck out of the way now - I figure I'll be due for some good luck for U23 Worlds in June. This is the last few days of our Chula camp and I'm sad to see it come to an end. Mikey O and Sexton left today, Jarrod heads out on Friday, and I return home on Saturday. Hopefully I can start feeling well again by the end of the week so I can resume hard training when I get home and focus on Memphis in May.
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April 17th, 2008: Update from Mazatlan Mexico: Finally arrived early afternoon yesterday. We got in an easy bike and run. Today we swam at a local pool and are going to head out on the bike later. It's a pretty cool place here. Last night I ordered a beer with dinner and they brought me two because apparently happy hour in Mexico means 2 for 1! I'll keep that in mind for after the race... Here are some photos:
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April 13th, 2008: First Triathlon of the Year! San Diego Tri Club Race (1st Place): Its been a busy day. I don’t even know where to begin. Should I start with the jellyfish patch we inadvertently swam through or the race director stealing our shoes in t2 leaving us standing there dazed and confused? I guess I’ll start from the beginning. I arose at 4:23 AM after hitting the snooze button three times. I haven’t raced a triathlon since last September, so it wasn’t a pleasant feeling to remember how early you have to wake up on race morning. I slammed two double latte power gels and then Sexton and I loaded up the car and drove to Fiesta Island for the San Diego Tri Club race which was set to start at 7:00 AM. We got there a little before 6:00 AM and were some of the first people to arrive. The atmosphere at the race was so laid back that we really didn’t feel any sense of urgency to start getting ready. People slowly started setting up around 6:30, and we finally decided to start our warmup at 6:36. The way things were going I was thinking that there was no way this race was starting on time. That ultimately turned out to be a bad assumption as the race director called everyone over to explain the course and get things started at 6:55, and Sexton and I hadn’t even set up our transition areas yet. We slowly started to get the sense that we were the last ones in transition and really needed to get a move on. It pretty much came down to the wire. I got my stuff setup and was running down to the beach as I was pulling up my wetsuit. Sexton was even slower, and I could see him running to the start line as the race director was giving the final commands – “On your mark…”
Although we didn’t start next to each other, Sexton and I quickly merged together at the first turn buoy. At this point I was on Sexton’s feet and we were swimming directly into the sun, so we basically had no idea where we were going. We continued on this path for quite a while, and the whole time I could feel what felt like little mud balls bouncing off my hands and wetsuit. At the time I had no idea what they were, but we had somehow gotten so far off course and swam into a patch of jellyfish. It must’ve been worse for Steve as he was breaking all of them up in front of me, and finally he knew something was seriously wrong and stopped. I stopped too and looked around for a moment – there was this lifeguard on a surf board right behind us who had been screaming at us the whole time, and when I looked over I realized we had gone so ridiculously off course it wasn’t even funny, (well it was kinda funny…) I started swimming towards the right direction and Sexton got on my feet. It wasn’t until about 100 meters from the shore when something stung my face that I realized that all those “muddy-feeling things” were jellyfish, and I’m glad I didn’t realize it sooner because it totally would’ve freaked me out. We were able to get back on course and catch all but one dude, who we quickly passed on the first lap of the bike course (which was 5 laps).
I had a good t1 and led for the first half of the bike until Sexton caught me. I stayed with him at this point and we rolled into t2 together. When we got to our transition area we quickly realized that our run shoes were not where we had left them. Apparently as a belated April fools joke the SD Tri Club likes to hide people’s shoes at this race. It took us a moment to realize what was going on, but finally somebody pointed out a big pile of shoes across the road, and Sexton and I went running over to dig ours out. We got them on and headed out on the 1-loop, 2 mile run. It was a mostly flat course, and I was able to put in a surge in the final quarter mile or so to win the race. So despite all the mishaps it was good to get a tune-up race in before Mazatlan next weekend. Plus, after this race I think I’m completely prepared to expect the unexpected no matter what the circumstances are. So ever since Jarrod left for Ishigaki we’ve been a bit more flexible and laid back with our schedule. Below are some pics from Friday’s “swim workout”.
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