The end is in sight!!!

Well it's time for another week in review for last week. The Escape from the judge one mile open water swim was on sunday this past week and capped off a nice week of over 14.25 hours of training while still holding down a 40+ hour a week job that does not allow flex time...

This week capped out with a 72mile ride on Friday, followed immediately by an 8 mile run. A nice and "easy" day of a 2 hour ride on Saturday with a 2 mile swim at a local pool with some friends and Sunday in the AM hours, I woke up and for the second weekend straight, before the sun rose I was travelling to a site to race on dark roads (this week however I was driving to Skaneateles Lake) After the race, I ran the bike 30 K long course of our local club's run bike run course in Webster Park for a total of an 18.6 mile run which left me feeling suprisingly OK afterwards. Not quite the thrashing that I took the previous weekend after the bachelors party.

I was stoked at the milage I was able to hold last week and looked forward to this weeks "rest week". My body likes to rest and although I get all antsy in the pantsy's...I know it's good for me to completely recover rather than kill myself with mucho miles like I would like to. I had some good workouts and the long run and long brick I did on Friday really helped give me some confidence that I thought I might have lost.

As an aside, yesterday was 2 months EXACLTY to the day to IM FLORIDA and that was a reality check. I realized that after this weeks rest week, I have 4 weeks to do one last build, rest adn then taper down to the big dance. Starting to feel it friends, the hair on the back of my neck is "at attention" right now. :) Good times.

As for the racing front, I raced the Escape from the Judge this weekend and did ok. I had a three and a half minute improvement from last year and I placed 8 spots better as well. The race ends on some timing mats on the beach and your time stops when you get to them so you can totally tell who all the triathletes are because they are the ones running up the ramp and pulling down their wetsuits (even though there is no transition zone and nothing after the swim, you just kind of do it out of habit...) and I was able to come in neck and neck with this one dude, but I stood up faster and raced up the beach and he just kinda stood up really slow and waddled up the beach and it looks like I beat him by 3 seconds, which looks like a lot in a swim race, but I assure you, we were neck and neck in the water, I just exited the water faster :)

I placed first in the 20-24 Age group and got another pint glass which was nice and then went home to sleep and run close to 19 miles by myself. It was choppy conditions on the water, but I was pleased with the results. I'm looking forward to the rest week so I can do all those things I haven't had time to do (laundry, dishes, clean the apartment, etc...) The Finger Lakes Tri is this weekend and it looks like a fun one. I honestly just want to better that 2:14 that I had at Keuka and I will be happy. (I'd love to break 2:10...but we'll see...) So until then, you might actually see me around this week as the training load is muchly reduced. Take care and I'll see you around.

~Travis