Full Speed Ahead

This is a busy time for me--every hour of every day is full speed ahead--I have A LOT on my plate these days and I am enjoying every minute of the organized chaos. I am home from a great week in Florida. It is nice to come home to wonderful weather. It was nice to get some sun--I no longer look like Casper the friendly ghost--mission accomplished. It was a great feeling to once again ride outdoors. The new Cannondale SystemSix Steed is very fast and responsive. It is the best road bike that I have every ridden. Now only if I can get my hands on their new time trial bike :-)

The week of training in Florida was all nice and ez Z1/Z2 effort:

Swim=5500m (3 short open water swims and 1 short pool swim at the NTC).

Allow me to digress: This week of ez swimming was a big contrast from the previous big week of swimming which culminated with a 5000m practice of suffering that included 3600m of quality, including a 17:37 'tempo' 1500m followed by 5x300m on 4:00 holding sub 3:30's. If you can recall the previous post where I mentioned that we have implemented a challenge theme in swim prac. Well I thought the challenge was to swim a solid 1500m time for practice at the end of a week of training (Saturday's are our day off so fatigue is usually pretty high come Friday). But CoachCT was sneaky and set a goal for us to swim 5x300 at under our 1500 pace. (I thought we would be warming down after the 1500m tempo). It was no easy task and I realized after the first 100m of the first 300m that I had no arms (I never have any legs when swimming) and would have to dig deep. HTFU James! I did, and made the challenge. Chocolate earned :-)

Bike=320k (5 rides mostly all ez with a few k of pace--over the rolling terrain of Clermont). I rode with my GPS and mapped out some excellent routes for next year's LPC Triathlon Camp.

Run= 68k (5 runs including 1 run over the beautiful 10mile Orange Grove Loop (my favourite run loop on Earth) and a couple golf course runs around the beautiful Orange Lake Country Club Resort.

I had the chance to train with several friends and LPC athletes. The camaraderie was excellent and everyone was in high spirits all week long.

I also used the week to firm up a hundred details regarding next year's LPC camp. The camp will likely take place March 15-22 of 2009. More about this in another post and stay tuned for some pics.

In others news--the racing season is underway and so is the nicer weather. LPC athletes performed very well at the Around the Bay 30k Run and the Running Factory 10mile and 5k Runs. John, Dawn, Lisa, Jim, Rob, Kathy, Ralph, and Jane, all ran very well. Champions.

Despite a hard week of base training, LPC's Keith Henry took part in the Clermont Triathlon at the end of the camp. This was going to be Keith's first ever Olympic Distance Triathlon. His first triathlon was the super-sprint at the 2006 Loaring Triathlon. In the last year, Keith has been able progressively build up his swim mileage from 700m to consistently swimming 2500m+ 3 times per week. Much of this mileage has been working on his technique and performing video analysis. It has been just awesome to observe how much his swim stroke (and times) have improved over the past year. Keith had his best ever swim and bike performance in this race. Champion.

Rob 'Base' Tranter took 4th in the 800m at the US Master Track and Field Indoor Champs. The Tranterminator has a bit of speed in him! Champion.

And in late breaking news--my soon to be bro-in-law has once again made history. David 'Pre' Sharratt has just been awarded Male Athlete of the Year at Conestoga College. Dave won the OCAA Provincial Cross Country Champs back in November. That is an incredible accomplishment for a tri-geek and has only be done once before (by a Mr. Simon Whitfield). Dave's Gold Medal marked the first time that Conestoga College won an OCAA championship in any sport (male and female). Champion.
As for myself and others--this is a time for training consistently well, and we are all enjoying the process to properly prep for the upcoming races. Over the next 2 month's, LPC athletes will assemble at the Boston Marathon, Flying Pigs Marathon, Mississauga Marathon, St Croix 70.3 Triathlon, and the ITU World Triathlon Championships, and several other local and regional events. We are all Champions :-)