Lake Placid Training

Spent the weekend up in Lake Placid doing some training with Jay and some of his other athletes. Took Thursday as a full on rest day and packed my stuff etc. Friday was the long drive up to placid. Didn’t feel all that great after so much time in the car. And my check engine light came on so I had to go deal with that when I got into town because it’s a small town and your in the middle of the mountains. Not how I wanted to spend my time there but since getting back home would be necessary I had to deal with it. Thankfully it was able to be fixed rather quickly and I was able to make it for a portion of the swim workout. I only got in 1.2 miles but it was better than nothing. Mirror lake is awesome and I wish I could swim in it everyday! The water quality is good even if it is a little cold and I love the wire the buoys are hung on because you don’t even need to sight to swim straight! I drafted off of tom on the way out and then hit on the way back. It felt like I was swimming well which I mentally needed after the eagleman swim. Wish I had time for another lap but it would have to do for the day. Didn’t time the swim but it felt like a good pace. Saturday We took it to the Ironman lake placid bike course. I only did only loop because of my knee. And since my ironman is so far off there was no reason to push it through another loop and aggravate my knee even more. I did a little too much distance on one of the out and backs and ended up riding 60 miles. The pace felt ok on this too. The last 6 miles were tough because it feels like your riding straight into a headwind and you making very little progress. I wasn’t going all out because of the distance but it was a good effort. My knee hurt more than I would have liked probably because of the hills. It’s actually a pretty nice course. Afterwards took another dip in mirror lake with Lindsey while the boys did another lap. Another decent swim might have been a little short because our time was pretty quick. Felt good on the legs. Hung out on the beach reading for awhile. Then took another lap in the lake with jay. Mostly because I didn’t get to swim with him yet and I wanted him to check my form and give me some feedback on it so I can improve my swim. Felt pretty good swimming again. It was late so it was only a 1.2 miler again. I saw only because I never really felt tired during the swim. Which is fine since that is the farthest swimming distance I will be racing this year anyway. Sunday did a half-marathon or 1 loop of the run course. Wish my knee was in better shape for it so I could be running instead of just trotting along but I that is what I came up there to do so I did it anyway. Jay noticed I am turning just my left foot out when I run which is the knee that hurts so I really need to work on my running form and drills and hammer this down. I have to improve my running if I want to be competitive. Over the last year I have seen improvements in my swimming and biking (of course I am still looking for more) but my running due to the injury and the surgery etc. hasn’t seen enough training time. Basically I have been getting by in these races because I have the fitness and the mental capacity to just stagger through the run until it is over. It certainly isn’t a strength for me right now through as back in the day it used to be. Ill work in it and it will improve. Got some raw spots on my feet where I have been getting blisters lately. Overall it was a great training weekend. Wish I had the time to train like this everyday! I wanted to hit mirror lake one more time before I left town but sadly there wasn’t enough time before checking out and starting the trek home. I actually felt pretty good afterwards only my lower legs were sore and basically anytime I run any kind of distance that happens. I am in the process of strengthening them back up. Monday only had a cf wod on the schedule. 10 rounds of 10 kettlebell overhead squats and 5 ghds situps. I used an 18lb KB (overhead is my weakness) and did all of the squats onto a med ball. Time – 10:38. It was a good wod to have after the weekend because I couldn’t go too heavy on the squats because of the overhead factor and I just love GHDs!

Tuesday – lower legs better but still a little stiff. Hit the pool 500 of drills to warmup then 5 rounds of 200 yards pull and paddles. Took a minute off between reps. Tried to focus on keeping my elbow high on the pull. That is going to be a big focus in my mind when swimming. 100 breaststroke and 100 backstroke to cooldown. CF WOD – Row 800 meters 100 GHD situps Row 800 meters. Time was a fun one. Had a good pace for the first 800. Felt it going into all of those GHDs and then really felt the GHDs when starting the 2nd 800. I was just trying to maintain a good pace on the 2nd row. Time 12 minutes.
Knee is still a little crabby. Not as bad as it was, not as good as I would like it. Not sure what I am going to do about it.

I might actually be getting my new road bike this week. It going to be a cervelo r3 with sram red comps on it. Yippee!

I also viewed my eagleman endorphin report and the funniest part is my transitions were the strongest parts of my race experience. Wonderful the things I don’t train are my best! In events I actually work on my swim was the strongest portion of my race followed by the run and then the bike. I really got killed on the bike. Im not going to read too much into the report as it wasn’t a good race for me. I can swim, bike and run a lot better than I did that day. The report is basically just charts showing you how you did against your competitors broken out by various factors.