Jon's Jibber-jabber

This post took longer than I wanted to get this review up.  Two Sundays ago, I participated in the 5th Annual Ft Ritchie Triathlon.  This is a local triathlon nestled in the Cactoctin Mountains of Maryland between Frederick and Hagerstown.  It is very close to Camp David, the presidential retreat also in the same mountain area.  The grounds used to be an Army institution but it was closed in the mid 90s and the community has been trying to revitalize the grounds ever since.  It is a great venue for triathlon since it has a limited access lake, very little traffic, a huge field for parking and a community center complete with showers for after. A portion of Lake Royer at the Fort Last year, I did the Olympic distance race as my second triathlon ever.  This year, I opted for the Sprint distance as I would be only four weeks after my full Iron-distance and didn't want to commit if I didn't recover properly.  That being said, it was also my first...

One week post-Ironman and I am feeling good.  Physically, I felt good all week.  Looking back I keep thinking "that was it?".  I set myself up for much more physical strain and a longer recovery than I experienced. Perhaps it was that I took recovery seriously this time: getting a post race massage, watching what I ate to ensure recovery, taking off of work, using active recovery swims and runs during the week, etc.  Whatever it is, my recovery is going well.  This is an area in which I historically struggled. Now, I reset.  I have my first sprint distance triathlon coming up in four weeks.  Ft Ritchie is a very hilly course with a long category 3 climb in both the sprint and olympic distance but realistically it's only a dozen miles on the bike.  I have never done this distance and I am looking forward to the short but intense sessions of training.  The temptation is there to do another IM.  IM Maryland is only an hour from my house...

This past Sunday I completed my first Ironman-distance race, the inaugural Challenge Atlantic City.  I had heard great reviews about Challenge Family events.  They are a huge series outside of the United States and this was their first event in the US.  I consider them probably the only major competitor to WTC in terms of Iron and half-Iron distance races. This was an inaugural event so one has to enter with the expectation of a few glitches.  The key was "a few glitches."  I was not impressed with this race at all, nor was I impressed with Atlantic City.   To be completely honest, AC itself is a disaster. Maybe it is from doing too many races in Disney or Florida but AC is not a very nice city.  Even the casino and Boardwalk area looks as if it hasn't been updated in years.  They still permit smoking inside the casinos so the entire public areas of the casinos smell like smoke.  Stained carpets, falling apart rooms and outdated decor wer...

I will say this:  I hate training.   There, now, I've said it.  I hear and read about others who love training.   Some venture to assert that training is much more fun than racing.  I came across a blog somewhere about this recently and it got me thinking.  My conclusion can very quickly: I am not one of those people.  In fact, I am the polar opposite.  I love racing.  If I could race every weekend of the year, I would.  I'm sure racing every weekend would eventually become boring or physically too stressful, but I am a person who likes to stack my season with races and have a very tight race to training ratio.  Typically, I avoid long training blocks. Here are my reasons for hating on training. 1.   It is boring .   That is B O R I N G, capitalized and emphasized.  This is especially true for long course triathlon.  This may sound strange coming from me because I am an introvert by nature.   If you ask ...

Last week, I posted about the mental games played through training.   Now less than a month away from my big A race, I have reached the peak of physical training as well.   This coming week is my peak week and my final big push before the race.  This will be a tough week physically.  My volume is the highest of any week so far and my endurance sessions (on the weekend) will be nearly as long as the event itself.   In addition, I still have to balance work and life activities.    This week, I also started a Twitter account.   I'm using it primarily for triathlon and athletic type details as not to invade it with my other personal life.  From time to time, it might cross over but I'm trying not to turn my Facebook into Twitter and vice-versa.  We will see how this goes.  Usually, I am excited about these things and post frequently in the beginning and then it all goes downhill until I forget I even have an account.  I'm hoping...

Yesterday was exactly one month from my first full iron distance race.  This occurred to me while swimming with my team during the evening.  Where has the time gone?  I have done my training plan, yet I don't feel like I've been doing this for 16+ weeks.  I am sure the long winter with cold temps well into April did not help but it feels like we skipped over spring and went straight into summer. As I look ahead to my final training push before race taper, mentally I cannot wrap my head around how fast this event has come up.  When I signed up last September (before embarking on a 7 day Disney cruise), Challenge AC seemed so far away.   I had all the time in the world to prepare.  Now, it seems like I am scrambling to ensure that I get those final sessions in before I have to start to pull back.  Mathematically, I can see that I have put in a large amount of training miles.   I have logged hundreds of running miles, thousands of biking miles...

Being relatively new to triathlon (in my second season of competition), I have taken up the habit of listening.  My wife would tell you this is not one of my best qualities but I'm not talking about domestic listening here.  I mean that I have been talking to others and reading other points of view to pick up tips about the sport.  Absorbing knowledge like a sponge has helped me become a smarter triathlete, if not a better one. One of the things that I frequently observe is the tendency for many who compete in triathlon to identify themselves with an individual sport.  Often, triathletes will say they are a cyclist or a runner or a swimmer primarily.  Many, indeed, have migrated to triathlon from competition in one of the three sports.  As you would have it, I came to triathlon by way of running.  For my first few triathlons, I remember myself talking about running and my previous road races.   Some say that runners have an advantage as th...