the cottage, randomness, and yes indeed holy cow a training update!

Saturday night was a special evening at the cottage (my favourite place on Earth and the home of my pop). My sis, dad, Bre and I, were in the presence of thirty champions for an evening of celebrating, socializing, and feasting. Char and I teamed up our respective businesses, and had LPC (Loaring Personal Coaching) clients and Loaring Physio employees, along with their significant others--over for a perfect evening at the cottage. I spoke about how lucky of a scrub I am to be associated with such great people. Loaring Physio is a team of multidisciplinary experts in the fields of physiotherapy, massage therapy, and fitness training and testing. It is your "one stop health shop". I looked around the room and marvelled over the quality of each person. All of my LPC clients are champions both on and off the field of play. Each LPC client is a well respected community leader, or a junior athlete who is doing very well in school. I am very fortunate to help guide the athletic dreams of such stars. I try my best to inspire and guide them along the wonderful and challenging journey of endurance sport. What they may not realize--is that I am truly inspired by them. One of my favourite quotes is "never drink from the cup of mediocrity". We had a toast that night, raised our drinks, and drank from our 'cups of excellence'. The pursuit of excellence is the only path we know!

Changing the subject, I have been given slack by one of my fellow PTC teammates for producing a terrible and boring blog. I have been guilty at times of infrequent updates and talking very little about myself and very little about what my, for example, TSS score was after analyzing it on WKO+ after an epic week of spending 47563 seconds above my LT, whilst still receiving 212 recovery 'soccer' points and achieving a stable morning resting HR of..... Hmmmm--well I guess a like to talk about other people instead and for the record--I have not had any epic training weeks--nor have I been a champion at recovering due to time constraints.

In my defense--I did title this blog "The Loaring Chronicles" for a reason instead of simply "James' daily triathlon training schedule". The last year has been an incredible whirlwind--one that will continue into the future. When the ball was dropping to enter 2008--I reminisced with my beautiful Bre about how great 2008 was and about how incredibly excited we are for the future ahead. The last year had us moving into a nice home in Guelph and becoming engaged--while starting two of our own businesses. Our wedding ceremony will take place at 'the cottage' on May 31. Therefore: wedding, LPC, Loaring Physio, Loaring Tri, new home, Maverick, and a few other 'projects'--seem to have taken priority over talking about what I did at swim practice this past week :-)

BUT, while we are on the subject--I will take this opportunity to talk about how awesome the PTC is. Craig Taylor is such a great coach. I have really enjoyed learning from him on a daily basis. One of my favourite quotes related to the world of coaching is "coaching will always be more of an art than a science--but ALL coaching must be based on scientific principles". Coach CT fits that quote to the 'T'. The atmosphere at the PTC has been excellent and I have really enjoyed the training and the camaraderie.

My left glute med has been a bit sore ever since the Canadian Cross County Champs so it has been more of a swim focus the past month. Coach CT is very wise with his macrocyle so there is nothing killer at this point of the year. We have spent much time in the pool performing drills, band only front crawl, and playing with lots of swim toys. We have performed much video analysis--which has been so beneficial--that it deserves its on post for me to elaborate on...

Despite the lack of hammering, we have had a couple of 'steady' sets which have turned into a bit of 'go time'. Some memorable main sets over the past couple weeks include: 2000m steady in 23:56--my first time under 24mins for a 2k in practice. Another good set was 2x800m on 10:30 (first in 9:11, then toast for the second in 9:28). Yesterday was a mean wkt. On the board for the main set was 5x300m hard. We had all recently watched the Victor Davis movie and used it as inspiration for working hard that morning. I managed to average 3:22 which is really good for me at this time of the year. In fact--although we have not been doing a lot of 'hard yards', and although it is only January, I think my swimming may be better that it has ever been in the past. I wish I could say the same thing for the bike and run. But hey--it is only January and there are numerous baby steps before I am fit and ready for the 2008 race season. More on my 2008 'plan of attack' but this post is already too long and my PTC teammates probably got bored after the first paragraph (and everyone else?) and didn't even read this blab about training...