Sunday, July 26, 2009

Dialing it in

27 days to Nationals. Training and racing have gone well to this point. Now I have about two more weeks of work, followed by a two week taper. Yesterday I went on a great three hour, 58 mile ride in the White Mountains with Scott M. We had one big 4.5 mile climb up Bear Notch and several good tempo efforts that were a bit over race pace. I followed that up with a 4 mi. run, the first half about 20 seconds slower than race pace.

My swimming is really coming along nicely. I'm putting in some efforts in the pool that I couldn't do a month ago. At Nationals, the swim is where I'll pick up at least a minute on the field compared to last year. First, it's a no-wetsuit race. Wetsuits help non-swimmers much more than me. Second, swimming was an afterthought in training last year. I was mentally tired from the other training to work hard in the pool. This year, it's been a focus of mine- without overdoing it.

Probably the biggest variable for me will be the heat. I don't know if I've done more than two or three workouts in temps over 70 degrees this year. It could easily be 90 and humid down in Alabama. Other than the normal hydrating and sodium intake, the only adjustment may be to run out of T2 carrying a fuel belt bottle and take an extra Lavasalt.

I was psyched to see how well folks did at IMLP! I can't wait to hear the details.

Next up- Bethel sprint on Sunday.

1 comment:

  1. Yes, I agree that heat will probably be your biggest concern racing in the South. I'm glad you've done Great FL to know what it can be like even in late October. BTW, do you have a race report posted somewhere about that?

    ReplyDelete