Week 20 Training Summary

Happy Easter! I hope the bunny was as good to you as he was to Payton. She had 4 Easter Egg hunts this week! Week 20 was my most solid week of training since my achilles injury two weeks ago. I had an injection in the tendon last Friday and although I'm hopeful it will get me back healthy it did cause me some immediate pain. My achilles was really bruised and swollen last weekend. Through this week that pain has subsided and on Monday I biked without any pain. Running still hurt a bit so I did not attempt that until I ran a whopping 2 miles on Friday. I placed the pain at a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. I'd like to get that to a zero before I begin running regularly. Sunday I ran 3 miles and it was still at a 2 on the pain scale. Since biking did not hurt I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and get out and ride every day. I had my biggest bike week ever during the school year putting in 340 miles. I rode 90 miles on Saturday with 60 of it in the morning and then had a great 30 mile ride with Jared Dammann who is a member of Drake's triathlon team. Jared is in great shape and will have a tremendous race at collegiate nationals later this month. He also kicked my butt in the pool on Friday and Saturday. I rode 40 miles on Saturday and then did a long 80 mile ride on Sunday morning. I thought a lot about Kansas this weekend, not because it is where I'll be competing in my first pro race but because of the movie Wizard of Oz. I felt like I was trapped in that legendary tornado the entire weekend while I was riding. I'm getting used to the Spring winds in Iowa. At one point on Sunday I looked down when I had the wind at my back and I was putting out 96 watts and was going 29 miles per hour. About an hour later when I was going into the teeth of the wind I was at 311 watts and I was blazing along at 12.8 miles per hour. Yes, that's right...over 300 watts and not even 13 mph. No, that was not on a hill. I also knew how windy it was when I got chased by a small vicious looking dog in one of those Iowa towns where about 30 people live. I could not get away from the dog since I was going into the wind at about 14 mph at that time. In total this week I trained for 25 hours...17 of which was on the bike. I lifted weights 3 times and bumped up some of my leg lifts again. I also did core work 10 times, lunges and push-ups both 4 times, and ran the total of 5 whole miles. I'm hopeful that I can up that total to around 15 this week if the pain continues to go away. I'll be racing in 3 weeks if my achilles is entirely healed. Ironically this is a race I signed up for last year but was forced to defer that entry to this year since I had an achilles injury about the same time a year ago. We had a great Easter church service with the sermon focusing on goal setting and how hard it can be to stay focused on long term goals. Our pastor reminded us to stay focused on "then"...meaning long term goals and also to ask, "Why not me?" That's something I remind myself of when I prepare for success during the 2010 season. There are 5 spots on the podium in professional 70.3 races...why not me? DREAM BIG!