Summer Training- Week 32 Summary

I can't believe it's been 32 weeks since I began training on November 3rd. Time has gone so fast. My wife said something to me last week about how she couldn't believe I wasn't burnt out yet. My response was that I'm more motivated now than when I began this journey. I've seen the benefits of the year round training and now race season is here. Last weekend was great for me. Getting my butt kicked by some very good athletes has a way of motivating me to work even harder. I knew the goal of becoming a professional triathlete would be extremely difficult. Last weekend was a wake-up call as to just how difficult it will be for me. When I finished the race in 11th place I thought for a minute that I must be crazy to think I can be a professional triathlete. How can someone who wants to be professional finish 11th in a field with only 1 professional I wondered??? Those thoughts were gone within about 5 minutes and I turned my attention to the work that needs to be done. This is the time of year I have been waiting for. Now that school is out I can train like a professional. That is exactly what I did this week. It was my highest volume week ever by far. My total training time was 30 hours and 15 minutes. For the week I biked 241 miles, ran 51, and swam 20,100 yards. I started a summer swim camp on Monday at PV High School. Paul Eure, who was my high school coach and got me started in triathlons has been kind enough to let me swim with his kids. His critique of my swim stroke has been a tremendous help. I cannot thank him enough for letting me swim with them. The workouts were tough and he pushed me very hard. The yardage was my most in a week since I swam for Coach Eure one year at Augustana while I was hurt during the indoor track season.
I had a couple very key workouts this week that have me excited to race next weekend in the QC Triathlon. On Wednesday I did my hard track workout. I ran 2x 1 mile in 5:04 and 4:57 with 4 minutes rest between them. Then I did 2x 800's in 2:30 and 2:28 with 2:30 rest followed by 4x 400's in 71, 70, 70, 65. I decided to speed things up this week after being run down last weekend. That didn't sit too well with me. On Saturday I did my other really big workout. I biked 60 miles and then got off the bike and did a 10 mile brick run in 1 hour flat. That was 6:00/mile average. I was hoping for 6:15 pace but got to the 5 mile mark in 30:12 and decided to push a little harder on the way back. I hit the last 5 miles in 29:48 which is a time I couldn't have run 5 miles fresh a year ago.
Next Saturday is the 10th annual Quad City Triathlon. This was the 2nd ever race I competed in way back in 2000. The past few years it has been my first race of the summer and last year I weighed 193 lbs. for it. I'll post some pictures from last year next week with the race report. Last year my time was 1:11:00 and I placed 17th. This year I'm hoping to go 1:04:00 and place in the top 3. The defending champ, Eric Ott is coming back to defend his title. There is also a really good triathlete from Des Moines coming. Only 1 guy has ever done the course faster than he did, and that was record setting pro triathlete TJ Tollakson. I also heard there is an Xterra pro coming to the race. Xterra is off-road triathlons. I'm excited to race a good field and hope to be in contention for the win. If anyone is interested in coming out to watch the race is at West Lake Park and it starts at 7:00 a.m. This week will still be a good training week but I'll back off a bit on Thursday and Friday. I am still aiming for a peak performance on July 11th so I can't back off too much for this race. Despite the heavy volume this week I'm still feeling very good...and I'm more inspired to race faster. Sitting on the butt kicking I got at Pigman for 2 weeks is probably the best thing that could happen to me in the long run. Thanks for reading! DREAM BIG!