Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Tri-Sport Year in Review

It's time for the year in review, and for this post I'll stick to my multi-sport year. 2008 was a great year for training and racing: after a several year lay-off (with the exception of the big Sur Marathon in 2007 I got back to training and racing. Our friend Celeste (over "a few" drinks at the school Christmas party in '07) convinced me that Triathlon would be the right sport, and she would not take no for an answer, so in late December 2007 I joined a gym with a pool, dusted off the bike, and started to focus on triathlon training. My approach was not particularly rigid: I wanted to build up my swimming endurance, spend a bit of time on the bike, and work on running speed rather than the long slow distance I'd become accustomed to for my marathons. What I discovered (and this will be no surprise to anyone who has switched from running to triathlon) is that the mixing in swimming and cycling is extremely enjoyable and it opened me up to a whole new world of training and competition. Like many, I was concerned about getting in the pool, but I found that my muscle memory from my adolescence was still there, and swimming became a relative strength of my races. Cycling on the other hand, not so much. I ride fairly well, but many of the fatster age groupers spend lots of time on the bike, and since it's the main time portion of most races, it was a bit of a disadvantage for me. My running was fine, not the stregth I thought it would be, but not a weakness either. In my first race (Stanford Treeeathlon) I ran a very quick 5K, and at Wildflower (my main race for the year) I ran an 8 minute pace over a very hilly course.

I did three triathlons (the above two + San Jose International) before winding down for the summer. In addition I joined Kalei (a friend from college) in a swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco (easier than I thought) and finished two half-marathons. So not a bad year, and for awhile approaching Wildflower I was in the shape of my life - or at least of my 5th decade...

What I am finding now though is that I have an unscratched itch: that perfect marathon. So over the holidays I've been adding up the miles and the speedwork in prerparation for a more serious return to marathon racing. In 2009 the goal is two marathons, a spring (Napa Valley) and a fall (TBD). I am focusing a lot more on quality and cross-training now, so I hope to be well-positioned for a half-ironman as well, time and life allowing.

The numbers for the year are below. I need to work on formatting, so forgive me the mess.

In summary: nearly 900 miles running (goal for 2009 is 1K)
1800 cycling miles (maybe 2K next year?)
and with 3 straight days of swimming at the end of the year I made it to 80 miles. 100 might be doable but swimming is always last on my list.


RUNNING CYCLING SWIMMING
JAN 64.65 145.50 7.71
FEB 69.67 125.00 5.80
MAR 68.48 154.64 10.89
APR 74.49 178.30 9.51
MAY 59.25 243.30 10.91
JUN 47.60 304.45 3.89
JUL 81.27 206.20 6.11
AUG 33.50 251.30 12.35
SEP 51.00 99.30 0.00
OCT 114.44 0.00 2.34
NOV 116.50 81.50 4.60
DEC 108.26 69.00 5.89
TOT 889.11 1858.49 80.01

Today's Run: 8.4 miles at Quicksilver, from Mount Umunhum Road to Providencia Pond, lots of hills, good run but lost one of my water bottles. No mountain lions!

2 comments:

  1. Portland has a good marathon (or they did the 3 times I ran it). Nice totals for the year. I think I had 1900 mi cycling, 5 mi running, and maybe 6 mi swimming. I did spend upwards of 750hrs commuting. Ugh.

    Not a banner year.

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  2. hmmm, yeah that's good timing.

    ugh is right

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