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The Big Three

The Last three weeks I call The Big Three. This is because I have had some of my biggest training weeks in a long time, especially for this time of year. First we are having a very very uncharacteristic warm winter so going outside hasn't been to difficult. Two for the past three weeks I have been able to go down to Southern Utah and train both on my own and with some of our grate St George athlete's. I love Southern Utah, it is beautiful and usually warm and just a great place to train. So the beginning of January started normal which is just the trying to get the new year started. Then I was able to go to St. G for one of my Favorite races the St. G Half marathon, that they do in January every year. I have done this race half a dozen times and it is a great way to see where my fitness is at and where I need to go from here. I got there and was able to do some riding on Friday which is always great. Then on the race day of course it has to rain and be crappy weather but at least it wasn't freezing cold which for the past few years it has been. The run went perfect especially for a new course which was a little tougher course this year. I ran almost a PR and went a 1:20.04 which put me in 11th place. So a great showing for January fitness. Then we did some indoor riding with our group of athletes that competed and a swim. Then was able to squeeze in a ride on Sunday around the Ironman loop with a great one of our athletes Sarah Jarvis. Super relaxed and a great way to end the weekend.

The New Year

Well Since I haven't written anything for quite sometime. I wanted to catch everyone up on things. Needless to say 2011 wasn't quite the season of racing I wanted or expected. The whole year just didn't quite go very well. But that's how racing is and especially how life is. Things never really go as fully planned, that's why you have to learn to roll with the punches and the unexpected delays and the downfalls of life and racing. Things were really tough this year. The ecomony really made Mahogani and I hit our coaching really hard to build it to a point it can sustain us which it is doing a wonderful job and we love working with our athletes and getting them ready to race. The season started out last year looking really good a it started that with some good training sessions and looked like going into St George Ironman that it would be my best yet. But just like how things often go it didn't go to plan and I had some low back issues and had to spent 30 minutes in T2 until my back released. Then I did have a great showing and race at 70.3 Biose in June with a 16th overall and almost a PR. then it was Ironman CDA(Idaho), which really threw me and my body all off course. With me getting sick the night before the race in the middle of the night. I didn't even want to go to the race start but did go and do the swim to see if things would change. Got through the swim and onto the bike for a small part of it. I knew my body was shutting down. That race and experience both really hurt me and helped me. It hurt becuase it was such a disappointment again to have such a big race go to crap. It did show me that even with me being sick I still was racing at the front of the field for the portion of race I was in for. So I knew then that I still have a lot of really good races in me.

So this brings us to the rest of the season which after CDA I decided to take the season kinda off and rest my body and get things figured out. I was having some major Fatigue issues which made me want and need to sleep for hours. I got my blood work done and saw that I had low Iron low Testosterone low thyroid. So just about everything in my body was screwed up and out of whack. So I started to just let my body rest and get back to normal. After a month or so I started to feel a bit better and had started training but just more for fun and to keep in shape. I raced a few other races locally and had fun with some friends on some bike relay events and some run relay events which really pushed me and kept my fitness up. I was able to go race a Marathon for the first time in many years that was just a marathon and not an ironman. I went into the run not really expecting much and wasn't really ready for it, but yet again when I go into a race really relaxed and not expecting much that is when I race the best. I PR'd my marathon and went 2:53, and that was with carrying a man across the finish line that had totally collapsed right in front of me with only about 15 yards to go. I remember thinking this guy is not going to make it and if it were me I would not want to make it this whole way and then get pulled off the course and not finish. So I grabbed him and started helping him across the finish which turned into me pretty much carrying him across because he was so far gone at that point. I spoke to the man later and he told me that he didn't remember about ten minutes of life right there. It is mind blowing where we as athlete's will push ourselves to just finish a race. Heaven knows I done it and will continue to do it every race I enter.

So I finished off the season not with racing but with starting my build up for 2012. I decided to start my base training for 2012 in November and wanted to do a two month base build and low heart rate training. I have now finished my two months base and I feel really good and I am excited to get the season going. I am not a big fan of the holiday season, mostly cause it just messes up the training schedule. So I am so excited that we are in the new year. I feel and look forward to a very good and tough season. I have a lot of races planned for this season so it should be a tough one but I feel really ready to hit it this year and go for a win in some big races. I am really excited to test out my new crank lengths, which in my first race I will be racing on my powercranks at probably a 130 length. So here is to a new year, and here is to more relaxed racing so my body hold up and I can do what I dream about every night.

Telos Trail Marathon

One of my favorite things in the world of training is trail running. I had the opportunity to race in a local Trail marathon here and even though it was only two weeks after Ironman St George I couldn't resist and pass up this opportunity. These kinda of runs and races offer me a little different type of feel and atmosphere than I am used to in Ironman and triathlon so that is one reason I love doing these. It pushes and tests my body differently.

So as I prepared the night before with getting my gear all ready. I went through my race checklist of gear. 1st my hydration pack which I use a new local companies pack called GeigerRig http://www.geigerrig.com/ These packs are absolutely amazing. It uses a pressurized bladder so that you don't have to suck the water or liquid out of the bladder. It is seriously so amazing how awesome this is and its one of those inventions you will say "Man why didn't I think of this". The rest of my gear consisted of my normal run shorts and shirt and then the most amazing running shoes ever built, and again also by a local company. The Altra Instinct http://altrarunning.com/ these shoes are so awesome and so so comfortable. These shoes are not a trail shoe but I couldn't get myself to use any other shoe cause these are so comfortable. So unlike triathlons this was basically all I needed for this race so it was nice not to have so much stuff.

I woke up early to get ready and eat my amazing breakfast which is made by Rokit Fuel http://www.rokitfuel.com/ this cereal and now they also have bars are so so good. This stuff is addicting and almost should be illegal with how good it is and how well it works. I headed to the race start and got there just a little bit before the start. As the starter started the race we all got going. Whats also so nice about ultras and trail stuff is that people are way more low key and not so hyped up. SO you start out nice and calm and slow. As the whole crowd headed up the hill, I worked my way up the dirt road and hill on the course. As I went through the runners I saw a bunch of people I new. One of those was Missy Payne one of my athletes that I coach that had also participated in IM St. George. As I got past most of the people I was still running along side a friend of mine that we ended up running a perfect pace together with a few other guys in the race. Most of this course is ran on trails that I am very familiar with run on a lot. So I was really enjoying myself as I ran.

Things went perfect along the trails of Bonneville Shoreline and then up the green Monster and up Grove Creek and then to Little Baldy and down to Trail 51 which is by far my favorite piece of trail. By this time there were people in front of me not sure how many cause I wanted to keep this race pretty easy and just out there to enjoy the trails. So as the race progressed I ended up running and pacing the eventual womens overall winner Ashley Paulson. So as we got to the last aid station and I asked if there were any other female runners for the full in front of us which I had been thinking there weren't any and they conformed this. We both got excited and quickly started running the last 4 miles.

This race consisted of everything great trails, snow, mud. Lots of mud really, which I desperately tried my hardest to stay out of. which I ended up doing a pretty good job with. As we finished the last few miles and came down the hill to the finish and across the line it felt so so good. We finished in about 5:09. It was about an hour behind the overall winner of the race.

Thanks to Shaun Christian and Mark Sanderson and the Telos group who put on a great race. I can't wait till next year to race again and maybe try a go a bit harder next time.

Ironman CDA!! Things go bad very quickly

Well the last few weeks have been needless to say crazy. I have had
emtions from a whole spectrum such as angry, frustrated, tired,
happy, lost, pissed, estatic, and most of all spiritually filled.
First off two weeks ago I spent the night before ironman CDA feeling
like I was going to throw up all night even though hours earlier I
felt amazing and I had written about how good the ironman was going to
be and how excited I was to race. Within hours I wanted to just stay
in bed and not even go to the start line I felt so awful. Still not
sure what exactly happened, just picked up some sort of bug and maybe
my head was causing some insecurities to make me not feel very good.
In any case I did not want to race and wanted to just stay at
cocollalla lake and feel sorry for myself. Luckily I have a great
support team with mahogani and my brother(Jarom) and other friends
that pushed me to go the start line and just see how I feel. So I got
to the transition and started going through the routine with my T1 and
bike. But there was no urgency or nervousness mostly cause I still
just felt like crap. I got everything ready to go and it was time to
grudgengly get my wetsuit on.

Ironman St George

Well this was my 7th Ironman that I have done. And luckily now I am on the better side of finishes to DNF's. All though I hate to not finish a race each one of them have taught me how to be able to finish the next one better. I just finished the audio book of "Open" the autobiography of Andre Agassi. It is an amazing book and I highly highly recommend it to anyone. Anyways in the book he talks a lot about his disappointments and defeats and how hard it is to loose. But when he finally wins Wimbledon or one of those really big matches he talks about how winning feels. He says that winning doesn't feel nearly as Good as how bad loosing feels. He also talks about how when you win you won't learn anything from that because everything went right so you only focus on the feeling of the win. When you loose or fall apart you have a tendency to really look into yourself and what or how the match or race went and you have to learn from it to move on and to not let the same thing happen again.

All of this was really came to me while racing Ironman St George. I was coming off of my last IM Florida with a DNF so I had definitely learned a lot from that one and was ready to do really well in St George. I had trained and trained hard for this race and specifically for this course. I rode the bike course so many times over the last 6 months and also the run course I think I new every single crack and pot hole on that course and could probably ride it blind folded. The one thing I have learned about Ironman though is you can't get comfortable with confidence and think that you will breeze through it and that nothing will go wrong, cause when you think that way you will definitely have something go wrong.