Sprint Training

It's really strange having your season go from Ironman, to 1/2 Ironman, to Sprint training and I'm not sure my body knows what's going on. The tough part is that I was really beat up after IM CdA and I needed some down time but there is really not a lot of time to heal up before I needed to start again for Calgary 70.3. At Calgary I went really hard and again I needed some down time before I could do anything, fortunately a week off and a week easy seems to have done the trick. Now I just have a small Sprint Tri in Peace River and then the season is over and I can get some deep rest and recovery. It has been really nice not having the pressure of Ironman training over my head and being able to spend more time with Ryder and Amber. Last Saturday I told Amber I was doing a swim-bike-run with a couple guys on Saturday and I'd be finished everything by about 10am! That never happens prepping for most races, but we did a 750m swim, 20k bike and 5k run and had time for coffee and the rest of the day to hang out with family.

 So far last week I've done 3 days where I swam, biked and ran all on the same day and I feel really good. The body is not breaking down, I'm not dealing with a lot of injuries, I can have a lot of time with family and I feel like I've accomplished something that day. I'm really pleased with how my swim has developed this year, my biking is still fairly strong the only area I know I could improve has been my running but dealing with some of the calf issues I've had I think I'm still running strong. I expected to run a 1:20 or less in Calgary but I was only running one day a week leading up to it so I'm not surprised I ran a 1:24 and I'm very happy with that time.

Peace River is looking to be a very competitive race, so far I know of 6 other guys that are going and are capable of beating the time of last year's winner (1:07). The last time I did this race I had a 1:02.17 time and I'm looking to go faster this year. Robert and I have been focusing on true 'sprint' training and I'm hoping the 20 minute all out bike rides and 5k fast runs will pay off. On an ideal day I feel like I could go sub-12 on the swim (including transition), sub-30 on the bike (including transition) and sub-18 on the run breaking the one hour barrier. The only really question mark is going to be the bike, there are a lot of turns on the two loop course and I'm going to have to keep my speed up to average over 40km/hr. I can do it on a straight out and back but this will be more like a criterium than a time trial, we'll have to see.