Foot in mouth...Keuka Lake Tri report

I know, I know... I said a while ago that I was back in the saddle and going to be blogging regularly (yadda, yadda, yadda...) but the truth is, I haven't. In case you couldn't tell the last post I had was from April. The general lack of a computer at my apartment has contributed greatly to the lack of posts. All of the fun things that I've been doing have also helped in keeping away the posts.

For those of you that didn't know (I was trying kinda to keep it a little secret) I joined the Rochester Area Master Swimmers back in March and have been swimming with them for a while and loving it. I knew a while ago that I needed some extra help coaching in swimming (because I self-coach) and this was just what I needed to get into the pool 3 times a week. I've been doing about 4-5k per practice and hitting about 8-12k/week in yards. And it shows. I did a 4x1km set the other day and held all 4 under 14:10 with only 1 minute between 1000m swims. It was sick because the last time I tried that (in Feb.) I was only able to average like 14:50's or so. So that's been really good and my swim time at Keuka dropped by about 2 minutes for a 1.5k swim from last year. Not bad (more on Keuka later)

I've been training a lot, staying pretty much healthy (minus the occasional hangover...) and hitting some good training. (Last week was a 13 hour week) Memorial Day weekend we had the obligatory training camp in Lake Placid and I headed up with Joe Meyers to do some monster miles. We did 100miles on the bike course on Saturday followed by a 30 minute run (oh yeah and we did one loop forwards and then one in reverse on the bike course causing us to do the 7 mile uphill climb at around mile 90 of that ride...) Sunday was a 15-18 mile run followed by climbing up Giant Mountain to cross another off of my 46er list.

I've been running lots and hitting up some good races and taking the base from Boston and riding that out as long as I can. My friend Greg has been organizing the Fleet Feet Dirt Cheap series which is really stripped down trail race series that is on Wednesday's (one in 2 days) and is low key and inexpensive. It allows me to go out and "play" mid week and I guess I'm kinda partial to it because I won the first one that I did. Good times and fun races with beers afterwards!

Keuka Tri was really hot. Let me preface everything with that... I had salt stains on my arm pads of my aerobars. I didn't have the best race that I could've but thats bound to happen. I was still pleased that I hung on to 4th overall (but pissed that I got passed with 2 miles to go like I was standing still - shows how much I was hurting) I just never felt good on the bike and never really got into a rhythm. The first mile in the run was done in 6:37 and was no where near the 5:56 that I popped the first mile in last year. Maybe this long course stuff is really getting to me... But I digress, I had a really good swim and that is my take away. A good friend told me to Sharpie on my finger a mantra for next race, so I'm going to give that a try. I'm thinking HTFU...

Next up is the dirt cheap race #3 and then the Quakerman triathlon which is a new one in Orchard Park. We'll see how that goes. But I gotta run, so have some fun on the roads out there, be safe and train hard kids. Hopefully see you sooner than 2 months from now...cheers.