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I am going to be using a blog as it is easier for me to quickly lace in video and photos.
Jarrod's Blog
I will still be updating this page with sponsors, race schedule and media.
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Happy New Year! I am excited for 2009 and wish everybody a happy new year as well. We just got about 6 inches of snow yesterday and today it is somewhere around 0 degrees outside, so not ideal training conditions. I am flying down to Florida for a week of training near Winter Garden and Clermont and will be racing the Disney 1/2 Marathon on January 10th. It will be a nice break from the cold weather and a time to get in some long bike rides.[ add comment ]
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I think the snow is finally ending after 3 straight days of snow. We probably have about 2.5 feet of snow sitting on the ground now. I had to run on a treadmill this morning but hopefully that will be one of the few times I have to do that this winter. My training is going great and the bike fit I got last week is feeling amazing. Last weekend I had a lot of fun at the New England Masters Swim Championships, my challenge to myself was to swim as many times as possible and I did that, swimming 15 events including 5 relays. Overall it was tons of fun and Minuteman Masters won the team title!
Of greater concern for me right now is the new pool drain law which has caused basically all of the pools in the are to shut down. Atkinson Pool, the town pool of Sudbury, MA, has to close despite having the new drain covers on order for 2 months. I cant believe that the government would pass a new law like this and the drains were not even made until 2 months ago. Eventhough the pool ordered them 2 months ago the drains were not even being manufactured until 1 month ago, so there was no chance of having them in time.
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Well the season is over and I am enjoying my time of low burn training. I have been having lots of fun swimming and am getting ready for a Masters swim meet on December 13th and 14th at Boston University. In addition I am working on putting on a triathlon, the Marlborough Triathlon, right down the street with race director Bill Burnett who put on the Cohasset Triathlon this past summer. The race website is going live this weekend: Marlborough Triathlon. We have been working hard to finalize the race course and it will be a spectacular course. The race will be July 26, 2009.
Other than that I am getting ready to start coaching high school swimming again this winter. If you are interested in having me coach you in triathlon or swimming, biking or running, feel free to contact me at jarrodshoemaker@gmail.com.
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This past weekend I took several long flights down to Huatulco, Mexico. Huatulco is very far south and is almost down to the southern border of Mexico. The town is very sleepy but is amazingly gorgeous. I really enjoyed being in Mexico and not being in Cancun or Mazatlan where there are so many people. I flew from San Diego to Pheonix to Mexico City to Huatulco and arrived late at around 8pm to another great suprise... my bike and bags had not made it on the last flight from Mexico City to Huatulco. I was not the only one though and about 20 other passengers had no bags. Luckily being travel savy I had a pair of running clothes and my race suit in my carryon bag. My bike showed up the next day and with my bike I had everything I needed to race. I had a little bit of stress waiting for it to show up, but once my bike showed I up I knew I could race, my bag was still missing with all my other clothes so I spent the next days wearing the same running clothes and t-shirt everywhere. I bought some board shorts for 100 pesos (about $8 dollars) and a tooth brush. In fact my bag was gone for 2 days and then delivered to the wrong hotel and I ended up finding it only after the race was over. So without bags I just did what I had to do to get by. I borrowed goggles from Sarah Haskins and ended up racing in her pink goggles.
This race was the last World Cup of the season and Mexico has hosted many World Cups and World Championships and once again they put on a great race. We had checked the new course out online and found that there was a hill, we put it into gmap-pedometer and found that a section of the hill was about 12% grade. It was easily the hardest hill I have ever seen in a race and we had to do it 8 times.
The race started off well with only 32 men on the start line it was easy to navigate the swim course and we all ended up in one big pack. I felt great swimming and just sat in the middle of the pack. We got off on the bike and there were 20 of us in the pack with 2 people up the road a few seconds ahead. When we hit the first hill we knew we would be in for a long day as it was so tough to climb. On the way, which we never did in practice, we hit 50 miles an hour! We caught the front 2 people after 2.5 laps and after that everybody just rode moderately because the hill was so hard. We all came into transition together and we all were quickly out on the run.
I felt great starting the run and moved quickly to the front. Kris Gemell (New Zealand), Laurent Vidal (France) and I quickly moved ahead of everybody and had a significant lead after 5km of the run. At that point I moved to the front and we dropped Vidal and it was just Gemell and I. I was running very relaxed and was just waiting for the end. I felt great running and after we passed 7.5km I knew that sooner of later a decisive mood would be made. I was getting ready for a later move when all of the sudden Gemell went and I could not respond. He ended up running away from me at the end by about 10 seconds. I felt great and was hoping to win but I am so excited for a 2nd place finish and my 2nd ever World Cup 2nd place. You can watch a recap of the race on the ITU website. http://www.triathlon.org/?call=TWpreg==&keep=sh
I have one final race this year in Bermuda this weekend but this year has been very succesful for me with World Cup Finishes of 2nd, 11th and 18th and an 18th place finish at the Olympics along with 2nd place at Pan Am Championships and 2nd place at the Gevena Continental Cup. I am looking forward to an exciting non drafting race versus some great athletes this weekend and then a few weeks of relaxation before getting ready for next year.
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