I ended up with a finishing time of 1:51:37 and in 554/673 place.  I was 26/27 in my age group, and here are my splits, Swim: 21:53, T1: 4:40, Bike: 47:03, T2: 3:23, Run: 34:39.  I am not real happy with any of those results although the run split is probably my best performance of the whole event.

I will give some detail of the whole experience, my family was on vacation for the week before this event up in Northern Wisconsin, we had a wonderful time and got in some great training, maybe too much training.  We drove down the 6 hours to the event on Saturday and get checked in and got our bikes put into Transition.  That night we went for a nice dinner at Applebee’s and Tracy wasn’t feeling good so she went to bed early, I made the mistake of staying up to watch Michael Phelps break another world record and win his 8th Gold Medal.  Our hotel was terrible when we stayed here 2 years ago we were able to do a Late Check-out and they had a continental breakfast for the Triathletes, this time NOTHING and NO late check out.  So AVOID THE PLEASANT PRAIRIE BEST WESTERN.  Because of this I had to pack-up the car in the morning and I got NO breakfast.  We got the the transition area in the morning with plenty of time to spare, the starting area was a bit tight but manageable, however my wave was the largest of the entire event with 107 people.  I had a terrible swim, my arms went numb about 1/4 of the way through the swim and I had to use my legs a lot to complete the swim, this made the tired for the bike.  In T1 I picked the wrong kind of socks to wear, I wore double layered socks which don’t go on very well with wet feet.  The bike was tough, my legs were tired and it was a slightly hilly course.  I started off slow, picked it up a bit in the middle and then died before it was over.  T2 wasn’t bad but I wanted to get plenty of fluids because it was a warm day out.  The run went as planned with no real problems, I just didn’t have enough strength in my legs to do very well.  So all in all I’m happy I did it and it was a fun time, but I wasn’t real happy with my performance.

I hope you enjoyed my race report, by the way my wife beat my by 7 minutes, she beat me in the swim, the bike, and both transitions, the only thing I beat her at was the run.

We had some extra drama on that day however.  1st the weather didn’t cooperate, the start of the whole event got post-ponded a whole hour due to rain, thunder, and lightening.  Then it finally got going and things went well for her, there were a lot of ambulance and emergency calls on the course, it was a bad running of the event in that regard.  But overall it was well run, well handled, and lots of women performed wonderfully.  The drama didn’t end after the event was over however, on her way home my wife got rear-ended by a guy in a pick-up truck.  He not only smashed up the car, he crushed her bike that was on the back of the car, and hit her so hard he pushed her into the car in front of her.  So it was not a good ending to a wonderful day for her.

Well I don’t want to make this too long, it’s been a long week and this is now when I normally write so I need to get to bed.  I just wanted to say, CONGRATULATION to my wife and anyone else who is completing their first triathlon.  Good luck to all and I hope you stick with it.

How lucky is my little baby girl to have 2 parents who are Triathletes?  What a great way to grow up having both parents who care about their own health and being so driven to be triathletes, that is a great advantage growing up for anyone.  My daughter will be worlds ahead of her peers when she gets older when it comes to health and fitness, just trying to keep up with mom and dad.  My wife will be a major inspiration for her, for her entire life.

I want to tell my wife how proud I am of her, she said 3 years ago when she was pregnant and watching her 1st  Triathlon that she will do one herself some day.  Now she is on the cusp of victory, she will achieve her goal that she put in front of herself 3 years ago.  This year she made a resolution to herself to get in shape and she has followed through on that 10 fold.  She joined a training group at our gym to lose weight and get in shape, and she did just that, in 12 weeks she changed her entire body, now that she accomplished that goal she set her sites on something bigger, becoming a Triathlete.  She has trained for another almost 12 weeks and now she is ready to become a True Triathlete.

CONGRATS BABES, I LOVE YOU, and I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!!!

The only problem in this market is getting financing because the financing has almost completely dried up, so you need to either find private money, have a good bank relationship so they will still lend to you in this market, or have the money to invest yourself.  But right now is a great time to be a real estate investor.

     Think of periodization training as a pyramid.  You need to have a strong and firm foundation to build up your next level, and you continue to build strong firm level on top of strong firm level until you reach your peak, then you transition and start all over again, only this time you are starting at a much higher starting point to build another strong firm base level.  You can also think of periodization on a much smaller level, you can periodize the whole year, each section of your year, or even each week.  Periodization should be a major part of anyone’s Triathlon training plan.

     This info comes mostly from Joe Friel’s Triathlon Training Bible, but I’m putting it into my own words and ideas.  You usually build your periodization from your peak backwards to find out where and when you need to do what levels of training, there is a LOT of planning involved to come up with a true periodized training plan, but there is no better way to build-up and develop yourself to be at your peak performance levels when you need to be.

     Periodization doesn’t work well for sports with long seasons where you need to be on top of your game all year long because you can’t maintain a peak for that long of a time period, but you can still use it in these other sports, you would build 2 peaks into your year, one at the start of the season and one for the end of your season the 2 most important times to be at your best possible performance levels.  If you build for the end of the season you will be constantly improving all season long, while if you build toward the start of your season you will spend your off season building to your peak performance at the start of the season.

     Let me give you a little sample of a periodization schedule…  Say you want to peak for August 1st, so you put your peak at August 1st, and you build backwards, you want to have 3 months of build up on skills, technique, and speed, but you need to build that on an SOLID aerobic base so you spend 3-5 months building your aerobic base, and before that if your off season when you can stay in shape and cross train.  Now after your peak you need to allow your body to rest and recover so you spend a couple weeks doing nothing or very little except for some cross training to allow your body to heal and recover properly, then you begin your off season training to get ready for your next season.  That would be a general periodization schedule for a year.

     You can break each of those down into their own periodized levels, lets look at your aerobic base building as an example.  We’ll assume you spend 3 months building your aerobic base, so your first month you would start with same 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week, or training for your events.  Then you would start week 2 with 35 minutes a day, for 6 days a week, with maybe a 40 minute workout 1 day.  Then the 3rd week you move up to 40 minutes a day, for 6 days a week, with maybe 2 days at 45 minutes.  Finally your 4th week you backoff and take it easy, you still train but not at hard or as long to allow your body to recover a bit from your previous 3 weeks of beating yourself up.  Then month 2 you start off at 45 minutes and build from there until your 4th week when you rest, and do it again your 3rd months.  That would be periodization of your aerobic building section, but you can break it down even farther.

     Let’s look at 1 weeks periodization, let’s say your week starts on Monday which is your rest day, then you go to Tuesday and you do a 30 minute run,  and a 30 minute swim.  These are both for building your speed you focus on cadence in the run and form in the pool.  Next on Wednesday you do a 1 hour bike ride to build your speed, you want to work on cadence and form.  Thursday is a 50 minute swim to work on endurance and you just try to swim at a nice easy pace to build up your endurance, Friday is a Brick workout where you ride your bike for 1 hour and then run for 30 minutes.  This is to work on your body being able to handle the transition from biking to running which can be hard on a body to make that change.  You focus on technique both on the bike and the run, while trying to maintain a race pace.  Finally on Saturday you do a 1 hour run to work on endurance and a 1 hour swim to work on endurance, and Sunday you do a 2 hour bike ride to build up your endurance there.  Then you are back to Monday which is your rest day where you do nothing but let your body heal itself from this rigorous training.  This is how periodization can work.

     The key to periodization is the rest days and rest weeks, this is when you let your body heal and recover from the physical pressures you are putting on it the rest of your training time, this is when your body will see it’s gains in performance because you are allowing it to heal and repair any damage and at the same time build newer, bigger, and stronger replacements to use.  You want to do this incremental stepping ladder to build yourself up to allow yourself to have the most advancement possible while avoiding injurying yourself by trying to make too much of an improvement in too short of a time frame. 

     As I said before and I will end this with, Periodization is the key to any good training plan.  I hope you enjoyed what you have read and you come back for more.

     Training in crappy weather can also be fun, I personally find that I run MUCH better in the rain, and my biking is absolutely terrible in high winds.  The weather is only what you make of it, yes it can have an affect on your training and your race performance but just think of it as a challenge to try and find an answer to.  Make a game out of it, like in running in the rain, you can try to avoid puddles which will slow you down, you can run right through them and get wet feet, or you can try to come up with a unique way of dealing with them, be creative.  But also be safe, riding your bike in the lighting storm is not safe, running in the snow isn’t safe because you never know when you might slip on ice, swimming when the water is too cold can be dangerous, these are all things to think about.

     So the next time you go out to train and see or know it is going to be crappy weather, look at it another way and try to make it a fun game, but don’t forget to be safe.  I hope you enjoyed reading this and will come back for more.