Catching up!

Wow!

     You being to get motivated and things happen and then next thing you know is that almost two weeks have gone by and you have not posted a dang thing!  Oh well.  Here is my attempt at catching up.

I was not able to make it to the Friday evening event and mixer because I got off of work late and there was not way I was making it from the North side of Atlanta to Peachtree City by 7pm (and stopping @ my house).  I can barely make it there from my house in Atlanta on a weekend.  So I got up Saturday morning and got my swim gear ready and made it down to the 1pm swim clinic.  There were about 30+ people there, most of which were from the south side of Atlanta and/or on the Peachtree City Tri Club.  I met Anne, one of the members/officers of the Peachtree City Tri Club, and she got me set up, and it was into the pool for an 800M warmup.  Wait an 800M warmup???  Please remember that swimming is not my strong point in triathlons and I was never on a swim team, and I have never been formally coached.  My idea of a warmup is a couple laps down and back in the pool.  "Enough with the bitching already Andy!!!"  About that time Desiree Ficker and April Gellatly showed up (just coming from the previous bike clinic they were also hosting).  They ran the rest of the swim clinic.  There were so many of us there, while we were doing drills they would assist and give people tips on ways to improve their swim stroke.  I was able to speak with Desiree for a few minutes, and she helpee me with a big problem I was having with my swim stroke... It is still going to take some more practice to get rid of that bad habit completely, but I am working at it every swim workout.  After the practice was over, I went and spoke with both girls for a few minutes, thanked them both for coming out to help us, and then thanked Anne for hosting the event.  Next year I will make sure I get into work early/leave early so I have time for the event.  They had a pro male athlete last year (Chris Leito maybe???)  and I completely missed that event.  Kudos to whoever in the organization is able to get these big names out here.

In the training department, I am really ramping up my workouts/week, as well as getting all three disciplines involved again.  I am still shorting myself on the bike, but I am going to sit down and fix my flat rear tire that has been like that for a week now, and get that sucker hooked up to the trainer for some workouts this week.  Running is getting better.  My best workout for the week was a 50 min tempo run (on the dreadmill) where I began @ 5.5mph and negative split every quarter mile up to 1.25 miles, and then kept going every half mile after that till I was done (increase was .1mph, maxed out @ 6.7mph by the time 50 min was up)... by the time I was done, I was doing close to a 9:00/mi pace at the end of my run.  I decided against doing track workouts and instead focusing on negative split tempo workouts until the ING half has come and gone.  While track workouts also help in making you a faster runner, I am still logging early season base mileage (I know I am behind).

I need to decide in the next couple of weeks if I am going to do The Chattahooche Waterfront Tri or not, because it is going to determine whether or not one of my "A" races will be Rev3 Knoxville or the Chattahooche Waterfront Tri.  For those of you who live in the SE USAT District, the Chattahooche Waterfront Tri is the Regional Championship for qualifiying towards the AG Nationals in Tuscaloosa this year.  This means unlike some other regular qualifiers where only the top 10% get into AG Nationals, the top 33% in each AG qualify at the Regional Championship.  This would be a huge PR for me if I could qualify in my AG especially since I have moved up to the 30-34M group (I think I went from the 5th hardest AG to the 3rd hardest AG).  This would also be a huge PR for me at the olympic distance as well.  The last Oly I did was in 2008 (West Pointe Tri - Hosted by GA Multisport Productions), and I did not train properly for the event and finished just under three hours.  I looked at the times, and I think realistically I can come close, so why not at least try and see what happens.

Tomorrow I am going to try and get my weekly stats up on the site.  Wed I will post more and try to have a bit of news up on the site as well.  Have fun, be safe, and train hard!