Sorry for the delay in blogging, though, I doubt anyone was fiending
for any of my written nonsense. Nonetheless, I feel like throwing out a little
update on my sporting life after a brief blogging hiatus. After my last race in
October, I had every intention of “shutting it down” for a solid couple of
weeks and slowly building back up (as if my body is like an old car or something). Well, I think I made it four or five days
without doing much other than surfing and hustling to class late; then I
couldn’t help myself but to start doing what I love again. I traded in my old
road bike and got a shiny (or matt-black) new Specialized sl4, which has only
fueled my desire to ride as much as I possibly can without falling over.
Instead of doing 4 or 5 smaller runs in a week I’ve been really enjoying piling
all my mileage into 3 longer runs every week. I’m loving long trail runs at the moment; it keeps me engaged in what I’m doing, kind of like riding hills when
cycling. It’s quite a bit more fun to me. Actually, looking back at all of
November and the bulk of December, thus far, I’ve been training significantly more
than when I was “in season” and racing. I haven’t been doing much speed
work, which is lovely. I’m positive it’s completely mental, really. I don’t love training (or doing anything for
that matter) when I have to do it or
am forced to, but if I’m free to do whatever I’d like, then I’ll do the exact
same thing just as long as it’s my choice. A great example of this is reading. A
lot of kids don’t want to read in school because it’s considered homework. I
despised reading growing up, purely because it was forced in school. But in
5th grade I decided to read (yes…) Harry Potter, on my own, and all
of a sudden, reading was awesome. By the time High School rolled around, I’d
already read most of what we would be reading in our English and Lit classes
anyways. It’s not my intention to brag about reading. I'm very aware that
there are serious readers and then people who read periodically for fun- I’m
definitely the latter of the two.
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| The Speedy Bill Jones & I doing some work at the cliffs. |
School metaphors aside (pretty sure this is the second I’ve
used in my race blog now. Time to pick a different example), I’ve recently
discovered the benefits of going to bed a little early and not feeling the need
to sleep in till noon. It’s mind blowing to me how much time I have in my day
when I wake up at 6:45am feeling fresh and go ride for 3-4 hours, then come
home and encounter the realization that I still have the entire day to be
productive (or work). This may be the biggest correlating factor to why my
training volume has shot thru the roof.. more available time. It’s important to
note that I’m in no way claiming to be faster right now; Maybe I can claim that
after I throw down some decent results in races next year tho.. ;-) Speaking of
which, this is my tentative race schedule for next year (as of now, I’m sure
I’ll be sprinkling in smaller local races here and there)
1/29/12 – Dirt Devil Trail ½ Marathon
2/20/12 – Tritonman
3/4/12 – Desert International Triathlon
3/18/12 – Superseal Olympic Triathlon
3/31/12 – Oceanside 70.3
5/6/12 – Wildflower Olympic
6/2/12 – Honu 70.3
7/15/12 – Lake Stevens 70.3
9/2/12 – Hy-Vee 5150 World Championship
9/9/12 – Ironman 70.3 World Championship Las Vegas*
After an extremely disappointing collegiate season last
year, a big part of me wants to take enough units off campus and race
collegiately again this year. I definitely want to race Wildflower again, and
as much as I want a “do-over” at Collegiate Nationals in Alabama …say, maybe
when I haven’t raced a miserable 70.3 six days prior, I really don’t like the
CNC bike course, so I’m debating whether or not it’s worth it to go thru all of
the WCCTC jazz by myself again.
However, I’m definitely looking forward to aging up into the
25-29AG. It should be a fun filled year racing against the faster guys in 70.3’s.
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| I applaud anyone who takes this picture seriously. |
As for now, I’m going to keep having fun, work hard as long
as I can, and continue getting ready for next year. I’m excited, to say the
least, and feel the itch to race more everyday. On a side note, I feel a sense
of satisfaction in the “weed-like” growth of my hair this month; I’m making
serious progress in growing back the bushy wig, so that’s definitely something
to look forward to.
