Day 18 - R&R

I'm not typically one to boast about training...but swim camp is DONE!!

Just over 28k in 4 days, and while I expected that I would be saying I don't want to see water ever again, I actually finished the camp with a new outlook and confidence in the pool. I'm proud of myself and Amanda (who actually did one more double swim than I did!!) for sucking up a lot of physical and mental fatigue and redefining our limits...and we both finished the weekend with the best swims of our lives. Thanks to Coach Gabbi for putting this mini camp together, and to Amanda for the motivation and the company :)

Swimming has always been my struggle physically but also mentally; I have never had a positive attitude towards swim training, and the hardest part of many of my training days is just jumping in the water. It has always been "why am I such a bad swimmer", "why is it so easy for everyone else", "when can I get on my bike!". But after four days of tough back to back workouts, and getting over the mental hurdle of getting back in the pool a few hours after a hard set, I am excited to continue putting in the work and seeing the invesment pay off. It's not hopeless after all!!

So now I am sitting in beautiful Bala again enjoying a couple well deserved days of trading running shoes for snow shoes, and pull paddles for -12 sleeping bags. Most athletes are finding warmer weather this time of year, but I'm embracing the cold for a mid-winter mental recharge.

When I get back to reality it will be back to business as usual moving forward to St. Croix. I haven't been this excited to start a race season for far too long. I am also very excited to be working more closely with John Salt and the Multisport Canada Triathlon series this season (more details to come!), who are making the local race season a ton of fun racing for series points and prize money!! I can't give John and the crew enough credit for taking some serious initiative to moving the sport forward in Ontario and developing the local and provincial race scene.

I'm also excited to hear more details about this new event http://www.torontotriathlonfestival.com/ scheduled for mid July. It was originally rumored to be a 5150 race, and now has something to do with Simon (I have no idea who is actually running the event but apparently will be 2013 Nationals) but it would be really cool to race through downtown Toronto so I may end up adding this event.

Day 14

Ok so I'm not going to update this every single day...but I'm working on it. I'm finding that my time to sit around and do nothing is quite rare these days, and combined with a relative lack of something worth writing/reading about, you get the lack of updates lately.

It has been a pretty challenging start to my training block...what else is new. Really things aren't much different from what I have been doing all winter besides a little more structure to some workouts and a clear week-to-week progression for workout length, time/wattage goals etc. And getting more and more excited to start my race season.

Since I have two weeks to update I will just hit some of the important stuff to keep everyone in the know. I have been very busy with work over the past couple weeks with our bike shop starting to get rolling. I've been back and forth to the Burlington and Toronto stores learning about these weird bikes with nobby tires and shocks and all kinds of weird stuff...and they weigh about a billion pounds. Apparently they are called mountain bikes :)

Anyway so things have been a little hectic but I have managed to get some good running in Hamilton with Amanda over parts of the Around the Bay 30k course. And training hasn't been interupted too much with all the travel. This week we are getting some much needed time off work to head up to Muskoka to play in the snow and hills, and do more rock climbing and snowshoeing than any real training. Maybe a bit of an odd thing to do while most others are heading to a training camp this week, but I'm confident with what I have been doing throught the winter and the break will give me a nice mental reboot.

So with a recovery week coming up it worked out well to impuslively jump in on a swim camp some of Gabbi's athletes are doing over the long weekend. Double swims every day for 4 days! I have been doing a lot of swimming with the Balance Point group and even though I sometimes end up swimming alone its a really fun group and Gabbi is a great swim coach, so I don't mind having the pace clock as my training partner. Hopefully this mini camp will give me a bit of a kick in the ass in the water, as things have been going well but I'm working on committing better to becoming a stronger swimmer. As much as I'd love to be doing more biking and running....

I have been doing a bit of riding, and my bike training will ramp up significantly in a couple weeks. I recently discovered "Metal Man" on my Computrainer and he is quickly becoming a good friend and training partner. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about (or if I have lost you, having admitted that I have imaginary friends) you can program a wattage pacer on a Computrainer to keep you company when you're bored out of your skull on the trainer. But here's the cool part. You can draft off him if you're being lazy, and since he's holding a set wattage you can keep him on your wheel if you ride faster. I know, I sound hopelessly dorky. But it's actually pretty cool. So don't judge.

Other than that, I'm feeling strong for this time of year and...I think...I'm right where I want to be. It has been a successful winter so far in finding a very consistent training schedule, staying healthy and working on the basics. Just a couple more weeks until the specific workouts come to get me strong AND fast for the early season half.

Day 1

I've had this blog thing around for a while...and it all started when I undertook a new and exciting (and slightly nerve wracking) challenge of moving to Guelph to train full-time under the PTC training squad.

Now that I'm taking on a new and equally exciting (and possibly more daunting) challenge of my first build to my first international pro race, on my own training programming...I figure it's a good time to document my journey step by step once again through training and life. Lately I've gotten away from updates on my daily training in favour of (mostly) tastefully opinionated ranting, but for some odd reason I feel compelled to get back to my blogging roots for a while. One day at a time to St. Croix 2012!

So with today being day 1 of my first build cycle leading up to the race, I figured I would share with you the details of my journey so far...



...Ok. So Mondays are my off day, and yes I do in fact have a true off day. Nothing exciting yet...I slept in, ate a yummy lunch and had a lovely chat with Amanda. But DON'T YOU WORRY. This will be a fun and exciting journey.

St. Croix isn't even one of my priotity races for the season. I have some very loose goals for the race but the big thing is putting together a strong consistent early season training block and pushing my limits on race day. Really its just a fun event for some motivation through spring training and a great challenge for myself to overcome a beast of a race along side some of the top athletes in the world. And to see whether or not I have a clue what I'm doing with this training stuff.

For those who are interested I will keep this up to date through my build with my goings on in training and balancing workouts with work and life. Not to show you how epic my workouts are, how hard I'm working, throw out half-truth - or full on-BS - time trial results or any of that crap. If you're looking for that go somewhere else (I can point you in the right direction) because I train honest and smart. This is just to put my thoughts on paper...or at least electronically encoded via my keyboard...and stay accountable to my loyal readers :)

More Sponsor News!

Probably time for another update...and now that race season is slowly creeping around the corner hopefully I can better at the whole updating thing again.

First off I need to make a big shout out to my newest 2012 sponsor, Oxford Dodge Chrysler Jeep in London. Elizabeth and the team there are giving me a ton of support for the upcoming season and I'm looking forward to racing hard and giving back with some wins :)

I'm also lucky enough to have received my new gear from Rudy Project for the season, including my new favourite piece of race gear...the Wingspan aero helmet. Super aero and light and vented enough even for St. Croix!



I also got a pair of the Genetyk Fluo glasses. Definitely the funkiest of all the Rudy shades I have and you probably won't miss them on race day.

As for training, well unfortunately I'm not heading to any warm weather training camps this year (I'm really going to miss the LPC Florida crew in March). But it hasn't stopped me from ticking away here in London. I'm on my first adaptation week of the year and it has been a strong mini block of training to start the year. I have been tweaking my weekly schedule for a couple months and I have finally found something that really works for me around work and life.

Lately it's been a bit of a swim focus and things are slowly but surely feeling a little more natural...all I can ask for in the pool! How much swimming? Well enough that I don't remember the last time my suit was dry. I could tell you about all my (occasionally ridiculous) workouts, weekly mileage, times etc. and try to show off how EPIC my training is (grrr)...but I prefer to be the only one knowing how hard I'm working. :)

My build for St. Croix starts next week and I'm looking forward to putting some serious hours on the Computrainer to get fit for an early start to the year. I'm also looking forward to feeling like a runner again after getting through the inevitably forced base/maintenance/strength "focus" of running in Canadian winter. Besides the odd swim TT and CP test on the bike all I really have to go by is a good feeling that I'm really happy with my fitness for this time of year and am training hard and SMART. With lots more to come.

Anyway, back to recovering for now. I promise I'll be more diligent with updates as training starts to pick up! Thanks for reading...