February, Pre-Training, and Caffeine Free

Yeah, so I'm over all the sickness I had in January and managed to string a few good weeks of training in. Nothing completely structured as of yet, but I'm starting to feel like a triathlete again. The volume is starting to pick up, but is still around half the time I normally put in a week during the summer. It's a kickass feeling though to get the gears going and think about what's to come. I love to train, pure and simple. Kate and I have also managed to get some more skiing in and love to get up there on the mountain. We're getting season passes that'll cover this year and next so we'll be heading up there a lot more.

Two Sundays ago I finished a run that may have been one of the tougher weather runs I've done. There's a real tough section of road over in Hidden Springs that a lot of bikers including myself like to hit. They call it the Dump Loop. It's an 18-mile loop with some steep long climbs that you keep doing over and over until you dump off. I decided I wanted to run around 10-miles of that loop to get some hills in on a hard surface. I don't think I'll do my body justice if I solely stick to trails. There's a noticeable difference in the legs after 10-miles on the buttphalt compared to packed gravel and grass so it's just best to mix it up. Anyways, I had planned to do this run pretty much all week. I wake up Sunday and the weather is nasty. Rain mixed with sleet and 30+mph winds. I'd have to cut that HTFU bracelet off if I didn't at least give it a go. So, I drove over to Hidden Springs and got my run on.

When I finally got into the hills it was a direct headwind with all the nasty sleet. Pretty fricken sweet! I was going up hill on the flats and climbing stairs on any hill. That's what it felt like, anyway. It was really a matter of convincing myself that at the turn-around things will get better. And it did. You have about 4-miles of tailwind coming home (my ass froze though) then finally one big ass hill to get up and over, which was of course back into the wind. So it was cool to get it done and I'm glad I didn't bail. I also got some good stares from cars going by and some thumbs-up from cars I knew were into what I was doing.

I started doing the group-ride thing with the fellow Boise Aeros club. A couple of the club members really take care of everyone during the winter. One guy, Ken, supplies six CompuTrainers (CTs) plus a few trainers with PowerTaps, and the other guy, Rob, volunteers his garage so we can all come over and train. I donated a copy of my Performance Pro software to the club and Ken uses it to get all of the analysis done for the members. He's also provided some nice feedback to help the software mature. Both of these guys are also Kona qualifiers/finishers so it's not too hard to notice their passion for the sport.

Last Saturday we rode 2.5hrs on the CTs and had a nice 30min brick to follow. Getting there I was thinking it was going to be nothing more than an endurance ride, but these guys had other plans. They had threshold power stats listed and we had to follow those watts throughout the ride. Chunks were at Ironman pace, while other times it was a nice build up to 110% of our threshold pace. There were also times we would go one-legged so it was mixed up and the time flew by. And the ride was nothing that left me thinking "too hard too soon". Just a nice mix of stuff.

I'm starting to get to know a few more triathletes at the pool now as well. I tend to show up near the tail-end of their structured Masters workouts, but they've been trying to get me in there sooner. My mindset is, "I'll get there soon enough". It's still February so I'm enjoying my sleep time which segue ways into another thought...

My goal for life is to get more sleep. I've been a caffeine junky for about 35 of my 38-years and my sleep always suffers. I was a Mt Dew kid growing up and I've consistently taken 200mg in pill form every morning for who knows how long. Part of that mindset is that caffeine is a proven stimulant for endurance sports and I enjoy the smack-in-the-face alert feeling I get in the morning before I head to the pool or on the bike. I suppose we all have our weaknesses, that's one of mine (along with Swedish fish and gummi bears!). So at this point I've been off the stuff for 8-days solid now and yesterday was the first day without the headaches. Shit, I feel like a recovering drug addict, but in many ways that's what it is to a small degree. I'll keep at it and if I find I can get more sleep then that'll supersede any buzz I get from the caf.

OK, final thought. My new sponsor, Bike Sherpa, recently put the Team Page together. You can check it out here. The entire team is chalked with some incredible backgrounds and experience. Check it out!

Peace out home brews,
Drew.