You Get Out What You Put In!
I go to thinking on Sundays drive home from Morgan Hill about a brief conversation I had with a friend who has been in the sport for a long time. It was apparent to him that his fitness wasn't up to shape, but he thought, just maybe, there would be some magic trick on the day that would reveal this. Truth be said, after the race he admitted that there was no rabbit up the sleeve or in the hat and he got out of the race what he put in to it.
This conversation made me feel even better about my race (and my April race) as I realized i got out EXACTLY what I put into it and not an ounce more ... and I'm OK with that! ;) So a little detail about what went in and what I got out of it.
NOTE: pictures below are from the Sacramento Triathlon
SWIM
IN -- in the past few months my swimming has been consistent, with moderate structure, what i consider low volume and at best only a little high intensity efforts that might be needed in short distance racing.
OUT -- the ability to swim steady, make some small pace changes to move to some good drafting feet, but definitely no top end to start fast and get away to the back end of some better swimmers. More than anything the result is not being as fresh getting out of the water as I'd like.
T1 - HA ... simply said, if you don't practice or even more importantly, pay attention to the details then you get dinged. I'm not afraid to say I lost at least 4 places in the overall because of inadequate transitions!
BIKE
IN -- If there has been anything I have done the most consistently it's been on the bike. I have done some harder, slightly structured training and even done some bike racing over the last couple months so the "hard" stuff on the bike is the most tolerable.
OUT -- It was steady on the bike and in fact I needed to keep things in check because of my lack of running. I felt real good about the bike ride in both races and it actually helped me that UVAS is a pretty twisty, rolly type course. I have been racing with the Power Tap but other than the first couple miles of the bike I tend not to look at it for anything other than a reality check. The good things is the downloads after the race show pretty well paced rides. Great for personal reference and even better knowledge for me to help my clients who "race with power".
T2 - See T1 above ;)
RUN
IN -- Essentially three runs per week, with most runs in the 40-45 min range and a sprinkling of longer runs. Other than 1 tempo run and one race I have done zero structured, "fast" running. I tend to do some accelerations on a regular basis, but that's it.
OUT -- On the one tempo run that i did (after a 15 mile bike TT) I averaged about 6:30's, and the last race I ran 6:20's for four miles. So anything under 6:30 will be good ..... I ran 6:20'ish per mile. WhenI seethat number I realize I am "capable" of running faster, problem is I'm just not currently capable of it. I would need to put in a little more run training for that ;)
MY result ended being no different than what I put into the event. The more I thought about it the more I wish athletes could see the big picture like this. After events like Sunday I hear a lot of "could of", "should of", "would of", "expected to" kind of talk. I would venture to guess that the majority of those people that thought they should have been faster, never did anything in training to warrant jusify their feelings.
It was great for me to put it all in perspective and I hope it does the same for you ;)
I will drop in the athlete updates in the next couple of days so the crew can have their own spotlight here!
Cheers ... DL
2 comments:
Nice thoughts Dave. I am thinking the same things lately. It's not too late to salvage a good year:)
Thanks Rob ... I think there wiil be more value in the ups and downs than we realize. Nobody said this was suppose to be easy, right? All part of the learning and growing ... even though we are getting "old" ;)
I have no doubts we'll get it ALL rolling in the right direction!
Best ... DL
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