The Belated Review...

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Sorry I missed Friday.  My girlfriend was in town for the weekend, and I got distracted, since it was our early Valentine's Day weekend.  I did some scouting for new gear for this season, but I came home empty handed.  No worries though, as I am sure I will probably find some money to spend that I don't have this year (yay capitalism, yay materialism, yay deficit spending!).

Yeah workouts kinda did not happen since it was Valentine's Day weekend.  That does not happen too often nowadays that we are so far apart, and also since it was "spend time with your main squeeze holiday."  But I am ok with that.  As far as training is concerned, I have a 13 week training block leading up to the Peachtree International Triathlon on May 14th, 2011.  Between now and then I have the Publix Half Marathon in Atlanta (March 20th, about 5 weeks away).  After that then I have a 24 week training block till I hit Ironman Florida.  Everything is getting planned out quite nicely.  I am only doing a two week taper in my 13 week plan, so I have two extra build up weeks to help with the transition to the Ironman block of training.  At some point I will be completing either IM Augusta 70.3, Halfmax, or the new Half Rev3 in Anderson SC.  All of them happen the last week of September/First week of October, so that will be perfect to lead into tapering for IMFL. 

I am also working on tweaking with tapering, because I have been doing some new research and studying the training habits of a coach in Australia who has trained up swimmers, triathletes, runners, etc and put a lot of them on Olympic teams and some of them into Ironman World Championships.  Basically he craps all over periodization and tapering (not to get rid of tapering, you just don't need as much as you think you do).  I also got to listen to an hour and a half interview with him, and I totally drank the Kool-aid.  Why???  Because it made total sense.  We have been trained (in the age grouper macro view) to look at swim bike and run separately, and not to train for triathlons.  Sadly enough this guy has not written any books or training manuals, and short of paying money to fly to Australia and train with him in person, I will just have to soak up any articles/training logs/interviews that he has done and try to tailor more of my training towards his style.  Do I think I will become the next best athlete?  Hell no!  But I think he is onto something and anything I try is bound to improve my performance by some standard, so why not employ his methods.

Just some food for thought.  Swam today, total workout 1700M.  I am going to wait another week or two and then complete a swim test.  At that point I will begin timing my workouts.  Tomorrow is bike at 5:45am at LA Fitness, and then I will work, go to class, and about 9:15pm I will get out and then head over to the gym to get in 4-5 miles of running.  Good times :)  Hope all of you had a great weekend, and I hope that all of you were wished a Happy Valentine's Day by someone who thinks you are special (friend, family, significant other, pet, etc).

Weekend Shenanigans and Athens Twilight Criterium

Hello Everyone!

I hope that everyone was able to enjoy a weekend of training as well as any other fun things you might have been able to accomplish over those two glorious days (wait, there is something other than training to do on the weekends???). 

The weekend started Friday evening with Patsy and I heading to a dual birthday party hosted by our friend.  We got there after everyone arrived from dinner.  This portion of the evening was to be the pre-party event before everyone headed to the highlands in Atlanta.  I told myself that I had to be at Mike's condo by 8am to pick him up and take us to lake Allatoona for our first OWS of the year.  Ha - side note - first tri of the year is in 12 days and I am trying to do my first OWS two weeks before the event.  Oh well who needs sighting anyways :) ?  Back to the story... We somehow got out of there by 12-12:30am when they finally caught their cabs.  People think I am lame and just don't understand why someone like me would want to wake up at 7am on a Saturday morning to go swim ;) 

Fast forward to the morning and it is storming... I was kinda pissed.  I will swim in the rain until the cows come home.  But lightning?  Heck no!  So Mike and I changed our plans and we hit up LA Fitness for an hour under his guidance (he is the better swimmer, swam in high school).  He wore me out, and then dropped me off, telling me he would be back to pick me up around 1pm so we could go to Athens.

Ahhh.... Athens.  Home of my Alma Mater.  We got there arond 2:30pm and checked into the hotel.  We had missed all the morning qualifying runs, but the main events began around 5:45pm, with the men's race beginning around 8:45-9:00p, so we were not too worried.  This just means an excuse to walk around downtown Athens and drink/eat bad food.  Also one of my fraternity brothers, Jay Lowe, and his band, Argus, were playing at Tasty World so we stopped by there for about half an hour to watch the band play before leaving and meeting up for dinner.  Dinner was at Doc Chey's.  Man that Siracha sauce is damn hot, but I love it!  The women't pro event was in its final laps as we finished dinner, so we then hit up one of the beer gardens outside to watch the finish of the race, and then get some primo standing room for the men's event. 

The men's pro event started a few minutes late, and the rain was beginning to pick up (for those of you who heard about tornadoes and such passing through Mississippi and Alabama on Friday night/Saturday morning, that hit Athens on Saturday night.  Definately rain, and some lightning, but the race must go on!  This is a 1km course in downtown Athens, and the field must complete 80 laps.  I don't know how many laps into the race the referee quit cutting people who were lapped, but by about 25 laps in, half the men's field had been cut out of the race!  It kept raining on and off (pretty heavily I might add) and so it was back and forth between the tent and the fence separating us from people riding 25mph+ on their bikes.  As the race got closer to the finish, we moved across the course and down to about 30-40 feet from the finish line.  The funny thing is that from my perception, the lead riders (6 in the lead group, had about 40 seconds on the pack by the end of the race) went faster on the bell lap than they did on the final lap.  Or maybe that was because 4 out of the 6 riders whizzed by my face (literally, 8-12 inches away).  All in all, good times.  Sunday was a rest day.

Rev3 is not an "A" race for me, so while I will tone down the training volume next week, there will really be no taper for this coming race, more of modifying my training so that there is a rest day or two before the event.  The week after will be a light week and then right back into training.  Patsy and I may do the VA Highlands 5K on June 5th, and then I have the Peachtree Road Race on the 4th of July (10K).  Still have not signed up for the Chattahooche Waterfront Tri yet, but that is on my radar for July as well.  I really want to see how I do in Rev3, because I would like to qualify for Age Group Nationals at Myrtle Beach if I can.  After that it is Good Old Peachtree City Triathlon in August (an annual mandatory event since that was the first triathlon I have ever done), and then we shall see how the rest of the year pans out.... I am trying to get something together that will hopefully make the rest of this year and years to come pretty exciting!!!!  Will know soon (within the next month).

Anyways, this post spans two days (I was too lazy to finish yesterday), so I am going to close saying have a good rest of the week and I will find something else tri-related to blog about soon enough :)

Murtha...

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!

TRI PTC Hosts Pro Triathletes Desiree Ficker & April Gellatly Fri Jan 29, 2010!!!

Peachtree City Tri's - January Update

Pro Triathletes Desiree Ficker and April Gellatly host Triathlon Clinics!

DETAILS BELOW!




Join the TRI PTC Club as we host two of Triathlons best women triathletes for a weekend filled with information, training and fun! Desiree Ficker http://www.desireeficker.com/ and April Gellatly http://www.aprilgellatly.com/ have agreed to spend the weekend answering your training questions and training side by side with you for the weekend of January 29th - 30th. Come join us to kick off the 2010 season in style!

WEEKEND DETAILS!


Friday - January 29th:

Dolce Atlanta Peachtree
201 Aberdeen Pkwy, Peachtree City, GA 30269, 770-487-2666

7pm - Meeting in Auditorium - Keynote Speaker, USAT Professional Triathlete (2nd Place IM World Championships, Multiple 70.3 Winner) and Accomplished Runner (2:39:30 Marathon PR) - Desiree Ficker.

8pm - Informal Meet and Greet/Cash Bar
Free to TRI PTC Club Members/$20 for Non-Members



Saturday - January 30th:
Various Locations

Run and T2 Clinic
Riley Field - Wisdom Rd, Peachtree City, GA 30269, http://www.peachtree-city.org/index.aspx?NID=312
9:30am
Free to TRI PTC Club Members/$20 for Non-Members
Bring your running shoes, drinks, dry clothes and all items needed to practice your transition!


Bike Clinic
World Gym - 1300 Commerce Dr, Peachtree City, GA 30269, 770-631-8004
11:30am
Free to TRI PTC Club Members or World Gym Fayette Members/$20 for Non-Members
Bring your water bottle and dry clothes - this class will be on spin bikes.
Please drop off your bike and trainer in the back lot and park in the front lot.
Get there early to ensure your spot - only 35 bikes available!


Swim Clinic
World Gym Fayette - 1964 Highway 54, Fayetteville, GA 30214, 770-487-4273
2pm
Free to TRI PTC Club Members or World Gym Fayette Members/$20 for Non-Members
Bring your swim suit, goggles, pool toys and towel!


It is $25.00 to renew your TRI PTC Club Membership. Applications will be available at all of the clinics or you can register on-line via active.com - http://www.active.com/triathlon-membership/peachtree-city-ga/tri-peachtree-city-triathlon-club-2008


It is $75.00 for all new TRI PTC Club Memberships, which include a club racing jersey (a $65.00 value).

It is $50 for the weekend if you are a non-club member and want to attend all of the clinics.

Registration is open for each clinic 30 minutes prior to each clinic.

Please email Anne @ adchrzanowski@gmail.com for any questions regarding the weekend activities!

The TRI PTC Club will have jerseys, shirts, hats and some limited supply jackets available for purchase. These are first come, first serve!