Final Tuneups

I can't believe I have been in Florida now for almost a month. The training has been amazing and I really have been having a great time here. Andrew Yoder just drove down yesterday from Pennsylvania and is going to be around until St. Anthony's. Of course I will be leaving on April 14th and heading home for the weekend to watch the Boston Marathon, run the new BAA 5k.
I did my final "track" session before Carlsbad. I havent been running on the track at all recently and instead have been doing my workouts on trails and this one was on a soccer field. After the run I hung out for a while and then went out for a ride with Nic. Of course as we were out riding and enjoying the easy pace we noticed a huge rain cloud and had to race home to beat it, which we BARELY did. It then proceeded to pour for about 20 minutes, but the rain is much needed here. We finished off the day with a great easy swim set from Coach Rich.

Windy Florida Weather

So the plan for today was to do a tempo run on the clay trail, eat breakfast, open water swim, eat lunch, recover, head out for a 2 hour bike ride. I had not been open water swimming yet here in Clermont and was excited to get out, but when I opened the door and walked to my car I knew it would be a crazy day. It was WINDY, and when I say windy it was sustained winds of 15-20 miles an hour and gusts up to 30.
I got the run in on the trail, despite the wind slowing me down at an incredible rate and for the first time it was really humid. I enjoyed it and had a great run workout. After that Sara McLarty and I headed to breakfast and met Nic there. We ate and headed off to Lake Louisa knowing it was going to be windy and choppy on the water. Boy was it... there were white caps and about 2 foot waves. We went for it anyways and with Sara's prodding we made it 15 minutes out. At about 2 minutes in we all stopped and started laughing because it was so choppy. I was going straight up and down and have not been bounced around like that in the water except on windy ocean swells. Anyways it was a fun time. After I got back I looked and there was a "Lake Wind Advisory" on weather.com... I'm not sure if open water swimming counts in that, but they were advising small craft not to be on lakes because they could be swamped by the waves.
I came back to Marc and Amy's house and ate, napped and realized I was not going to get outside to bike because of the wind, so I had to get out Marc's computrainer. I just was not going to take the risk on these small roads with the wind.

Hard Training!

Wow, training has been had these past few days. I have been focusing on running fast and had put up some great 3 x mile and 6 x 1k workouts on a the clay trail here in Clermont. We decided to run my intervals off the track as repetitive running on the track has a tendency to do two things: 1) Cause imbalances in your muscles and 2) Cause injuries because the track is a bit harder than the trail. Other than running me and Jordan and Nic went out today and did a killer bike session. We went out to Florida Boy's Ranch Road and Bay Lake and did tempo efforts on both roads, but in those tempo efforts we played a game that Ethan and I made up last year called "Speed Limits." Basically you sprint for speed limit signs and add up your totals. Boys Ranch road has a limited number of signs, but they range from 10 up to 45. Bay Lake has a few 45s and some in the 30s. Then we did a short run off the bike which ended up being faster than we planned, but we felt good. Off to bed!

Long trip to FLA

I flew home on the 11th to attend the high school swim banquet, which was tons of fun. It was great to celebrate a wonderful year. As soon as the banquet ended Alicia and I started a long drive, 1,301 miles to be exact! We decided since I was going to be in Florida for the next month it was smarter to drive a car down instead of renting one for $1,000. Honestly, how does it cost $1,000 for a rental car company to rent me a car for a month when the monthly payments on cars are $200-$400, but I digress. Anyways the trip down was long and well long. We stopped on Wednesday night at 3:30am in the small town of Laurel, MD just outside Washington DC for a short nights sleep.
We were up again at 9am and headed into DC to meet with the race director of the ITU DC World Championship Series Race. We got a quick tour of the course and it is spectacular. We swim in the Potomac and bike past the Washington Monument and past the Capital and Supreme Court buildings along the Mall. Honestly, it is a spectacular course in downtown DC, something I have never seen before. After the tour we drove to a pool and met up with the Mayor of DC, he is a great guy and we joined him and his swimming buddies for a quick swim. After chatting it up after the workout (I swam short and went for a 4 mile run), we were back on the road at 2pm, with an estimated ETA at Marc and Amy's house in Florida of 3:30am.
It was fun to see the Garmin ETA dropping slowly as we headed south. The best part about the trip from DC south is that there are NO cities on the highway after Richmond, VA. So when the directions said go 778 miles on I-95 it was very accurate. We stopped 3 times, 2 times for food and once at 1am because the car was sounding very loud. We had just had our muffler replaced and were afraid we were out of oil or the muffler had fallen off or something like that. We added more oil and limped into Winter Garden, FL at 3:30am.
After another short night of sleep I actually felt ok but we had to go get the car checked up on and pick Pam up at the airport at 9:15am. So we went to Meineke and got the diagnosis of a rusted out catlytic converter and it needed to be replaced. We picked Pam up, went back to Meineke and got it fixed.
So beyond that last week was a recovery week for me. I did a couple of shorter swims and bikes. I did a long run and a fartlek over the weekend.
On Monday we did a morning masters swim and headed to Disney for the day. It was nice to get a little change in the routine. Only problem was my ear started to hurt. Of course when I woke up on Tuesday morning it was much worse and after I did the track workout (which turned into a trail workout after the track ended up with 4 different college teams on it at 8:15am) I went to the Urgent Care Center and got the diagnosis of another outer ear infection! I am on anti-biotics now and will be fine within a few days... and I don't have to stop swimming.

Check this out!

Please check this out: http://chrisjourney.com/blog/?p=6
My brother's friend and fellow Massachusetts triathlete Stephen Wright is cycling from Florida to Massachusetts on his spring break to raise awareness for Amyloidosis. Quite amazing!

Florida Training!

Things could not be better here in Florida. Over the past few days I have been getting in some great bike miles including a 2 hour ride yesterday and an hour and half ride on Wednesday. The riding outside Clermont is amazing and beautiful on roads that are very quiet. I just got back from a mid afternoon tempo session on 5 mile road, which was extremely hot since there is no shade at all and it was about 75 degrees out and a few small clouds. Jordan Bryden is here for three weeks training with me and it was nice to have somebody out there suffering through the heat as well. Earlier this morning we swam morning Masters Swim practice at the NTC coached by Sara McLarty. It was a great practice with the only drawback being that it starts at 6am. Now it is recovery time before a hard weekend of training!

In Florida

After some hard thinking I decided that I would be better off training in Florida than in Chula Vista. I caught a red eye flight back on Monday night and arrived bright and early (5:40am) after a 4 hour and 15 minute flight. I had an awesome time training with Kevin, Steve, Ethan and Matt, but I needed to be closer to home. I am going to be in Florida until April 15 with a trip back to California to race in Carlsbad.
Before I left I had the chance to work with Pam a lot and we started to work on my biomechanics again and fix some of the problems that had started back up over the winter. I got in a hard run workout, swim and an easy recovery bike on Monday. Sunday was a lot of fun as Ethan and I went with Bob Babbitt up to Pine Valley to ride. It was a great ride and very beautiful country and the entire ride was over 3800 feet of altitude.