Last Saturday I had my first and last "warm-up" race. Just a short sprint distance triathlon in North Platte, Nebraska. Nothing fancy. Nothing crazy. Just an opportunity to do some short training at race pace, and also practice my transitions at least once before I head to Texas. The race went well. In fact for it being the first race of the season I was fairly pleased. I set a PR at that distance, and all things considered felt pretty good the whole time. Now granted, its only about a 1/10th of the distance I will be doing in a couple weeks, but feeling good is better than feeling bad. In fact even after the race my buddy Jarod and I did some sprint workouts in the afternoon. So all in all can't complain with how I felt.
This last week has been pretty much my last go at "major training". That is not to say I am not going to do anything between now and the race. It just means I will be tapering off and trying to rest and recover to make sure I am 100% come race day. I will still do some running and biking to stay loose and keep the muscles limber, but won't be doing near the distance or intensity that I have been.
This last week I put 7 hours on the bike riding (110 miles), 21 miles of running(included in that is the 10k race I am running in the morning), 1.5 miles of swimming, and 30 minutes of weight lifting.
At this point my fitness and stamina is what it is. Now its about maintaining and recovering. I will admit training for this has been challenging. Not that I thought it wasn't going to be, but having to deal with the Midwest weather this winter really threw some kinks into the plan. But I can't control the weather I can only adjust the best I can and that is what I did. I guess we will find out in two weeks how much affect it had on things.
Until then its time to scale back and bit and enjoy the rest of the ride....
