Another One Bites The Dust

Another week down that is. Anyway, another week of training. I'm ready to be done with this mid-season break. The only deal is the 2nd half of the season. I have a bit of a quandary if that's the right use of that word.

I'm doing 70.3 worlds. That is a given. It's what I do between now and then that is to be decided. I'm doing River Cities, Austin Triathlon. That's where it gets fuzzy. I'll either do Cancun 70.3 after that and then the US Open or the Longhorn Triathlon. The US Open will be a ridiculously fast field. Longhorn is a hometown 70.3. It's a tough call. Longhorn is 2 weeks after Cancun and about 5 weeks before 70.3 worlds. Is 3 1/2s in 7 weeks too much? I don't think so. We'll see.

Last week was again, nothing spectacular. I got my SRM back. I had some shorter cranks put on it. I've been riding 175mm cranks for as long as I remember. I put some 172.5mm cranks on my road bike. They felt really good. Then, I put them on my tri-bike and even though I didn't have the powermeter, they felt really good. I don't have a real test yet to see if they really do make a difference. But, I did ride an 80 miler on Saturday about 10 minutes faster than I previously did at a lower wattage. It was really hot. I also made a couple of positional changes. Did that make me faster? Who knows.

I've updated the race schedule with the races that I KNOW I'm doing.

Does 1 Hour Make 2 seconds Difference?

Maybe it's the cumulative effect of getting up pretty early all week. But, our normal 6:30am swim practice was at 5:30 from Wednesday - Friday this week since there was a USA Swimming meet going on. 1 hour earlier. I certainly didn't get to bed 1 hour earlier, nor did I swim every morning from Wednesday to Friday, but I did swim 2 of them. I did get good sleep this week though.

Anyway, last Friday we did a set of 100s long course Fast. I was going pretty good. They were faster than 65 seconds and slower than 60 seconds, except for the butterfly, and they were slower than 65 and faster than 70. I was pretty pleased with the set. Actually, I was really pleased. That was with a 6:30 get in the pool time.

Today, with a 5:30 get in the pool time, I was an average of about 2 seconds slower per 100, and there is no way that I could have made a 100 butterfly today. Does 1 hour in the morning make that much difference? My stroke felt nice and smooth. My kick felt strong. I just went slower. I know that there has been research that shows mid/late afternoon workouts can generally yield the best results across the boards, but does 1 hour in the morning make a 4% difference in swim times?

Food for thought...I'm going to go get some food for my brain now since I've already been up over 3 hours and have only eaten a couple of pieces of toast and a crappy tasting energy bar.

The "Country" Side of Me Likes This

A friend sent me a short video clip yesterday. I thought it was funny. Hank Jr. says "I can skin a buck...run a trotline...I've got a shotgun, rifle...A country boy can survive" If you don't know what skinning a buck means or what a trotline is, then you may not laugh even though this video doesn't really deal with either of them. Or maybe you will.



Might go see the folks this weekend when Amy races Irongirl. Dad seems to favor Herefords or a Hereford cross. I don't know if he's been too much of a fan of the aforementioned cattle in the video above.