Non-Race Report

After crashing hard on a ride Sunday it now seems official that my only races this year will a state championship, national championship, and world championship. I guess if you’re going to race you might as well go big. I will also add that this is not the best way to prepare for racing, especially if you’ve any interest in your results.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. At the beginning of the year my calendar was filled with preparatory races. Duathlons are scarce in my part of the world but I travel a fair amount so it didn’t seem like such a task to run into a few here and there. However, my work and race schedule’s never synched up and the closest I found myself to a duathlon on any given weekend was a nine hour drive. I’d also circled some tris, runs, and bike races to do and none of them worked out either.

Other than Duathlon Nationals, which I had to do in order to qualify for Worlds, the only race I made it to was our mountain biking state championships. This had nothing whatsoever to do with prepping for multi-sports. I only entered this race so I could qualify for nationals, visit my friend Rebecca, and ride all the trails she’s always going on about. I did manage to qualify, traveled to Ketchum for the event, which leads to this installment of the non-race report.

biketown.


The non-race report requires some back story. Cycling and triathlon teams have tradition where the best placed rider on the team writes up a race report and submits it to the team mailing list. During the end of my race-every-weekend stint as a road racer, when I missed a long stretch of races for strange, amusing, and downright lazy reasons, I submitted a “non-race report” that seemed to entertain the lads as well help them not feel bad about calling early on a race morning to make sure I’d show up.

reed on a night where we probably weren't making the races in the morning.

Most of these tales included my friend Reed. We were on the same team we lived an hour apart. This meant that it generally made sense to stay at whomever’s house was closest to the next day’s race. And this led to a series of last-minute decisions about things to do that might be more fun than riding our bikes in circles as fast as we could. These might include an epic road ride, a long climb we’d been wanting to tick off our list, a casual group ride that was supposed to be attended by cute girls, mountain biking, rock climbing, or simply a long night of drinking and socializing leading to us wanting more sleep. The first few excuses were legit but, after a while, we decided that it really was more fun to just ride our bikes on our own time than it was to race. I haven't raced much since.

who looks like a pig?

yep, biketown.


So I’m in Ketchum, a few days before Nats, and not exactly tapering. In fact I’m trying to ride as many of the classic local rides as possible before the short holiday is over. I’ve got two races on the schedule, neither of which I care too much about. The morning of the first race I head out early to pre-ride the course, and crash. Hard.

reba got this call while we were at breakfast. it's mountain biking. sometimes you crash. at least my crash didn't turn out like this.

It’s a stupid crash because it’s on a part of the course that I’d already determined to run because Rebecca told me it would be much faster. But I’m going slow and warming up and just want to see if I can clear the obstacles. I don’t preview anything and one second I’m hopping over a tree and the next I’m doing cartwheels down a mountain side. I’m shocked, because it looked rather innocuous, but if I’d bothered to glance at it beforehand I would have seen a root shooting out from the back of the tree that was like a small ramp leading off of the trail. I’m pretty bloodied but everything seems to be working so I ride the rest of the course and then head to breakfast. The next morning one hand would be too swollen to grab my brakes—and is still bothering me a month later—but that’s an aside.

A little later, Finnegan and I begin a nice long and slow warm-up for the race. Norba (now USA Cycling) races are short (usually 10-20 miles) and ridiculously fast out of the gate. They are hard to warm-up for because the first few minutes are absolutely full gas. Since I often settle in about hour three (too much enduro stuff over the last decade) I decide to warm-up for an hour and a half; riding aerobic for most of it and putting in a few hard efforts to “open the pipes,” as cyclists say. This also doubles as a workout for Finn and allows me to preview another classic trail.

At some point along this trail thoughts of the long-forgotten non-race report start to trickle into my head. The trail is great. It’s empty. We’re surrounded with quiet, just a few mountain sounds, and jillion-dollar views. I hit the end of my warm-up and sit down to have a snack. I can faintly make out the race announcer, far below, and picture the mayhem of 100 guys all redlining to be first into a dusty stretch of singletrack. I look in the other direction, where empty trail stretches forever into a mountain range I’ve yet to visit. Finnegan has never looked happier. I ask his advice. Needless to say, the non-race report is alive and well.

at this point there's only one rational decision that can be made.

Winter Training Recap

Given it’s the first warm sunny day of the year here in Utah it seemed like a good time to record how my winter training program went. Maybe then winter here in the Wasatch will finally end. We kind of skipped spring but what are you going to do? At least our house isn’t about to get flooded so I’ll count myself lucky.

Back in December I wrote down some goals and carved out three large blocks of training leading to a race at the end of April. May was a month “off”, and now it’s time to add to the base I spent the winter building. I don’t often record the end result of my programs. The goal of this blog is to educate; hopefully in an entertaining manner, and planning a program aids with this. Results are a nice perk, especially when you hit a goal, but the important elements of training programs happen en route. End results are personal and I only report on them if there’s a good story involved or something to learn.

This time, however, I’m rolling my winter training into another program that should be some help to all of you Beachbody-ers that use our programs to train for sports. The next phase of my Year of Fitness will be putting my knowledge to the test, big time. But that quest begins later. Today we’re recappin’.

From December:
Goal: since all training plans must have one, is to build a huge fitness base that will see me through an epic year of adventures.

I think this goal went well. While a lot of my sports specific fitness is nowhere near its peak my general conditioning is as good as it’s been in my life. I’ve got no acute injuries (other than some scrapes from falling off my mountain bike), my chronic pains are all at bay, and my strength base is very well rounded.

training with finnegan: meaning most of it was on trails. not ideal for speed but big plusses for fun, especially when you consider how crazy an un-exercised rescued cattle dog can be.

My primary fitness test, Duathlon Nationals, went well. With very little sports-specific training I easily qualified for the World Championships in a fun, very spirited, and ultra-competitive race for a multi-sport event (which can be very boring). Later I learned that a few of us had been penalized for some weird infractions and then had to sweat out the selection process as our penalties (6 minutes in a race where I was 4 behind the winner) knocked us into the alternate category for the US team. My official notification of selection came just as I was ready to target some new goals for the next round of training, but now I’m all in for the World’s in September, in Gijon, Spain.

probably losing time for sporting un-triathlon-specific ritte clothing

Climbing-wise I’m way behind schedule, mainly because the weather has been dreadful. Last week we humped some gear up to a local crag (with a one-hour uphill approach so we stash gear so that we can “run” up and down after work) and it was still completely soaked. Most of our local cliffs won’t be ready until midsummer so there just hasn’t been any urgency to get serious.

And while I’ve had very little time for long endurance days the few I’ve put in went surprisingly well. This is a testament to how solid a fitness base our programs build as my training centered, as you may know, on Asylum, an as-of-yet unannounced Beachbody program, and the PAP phase of X Two.

likely i was the only one racing in tucson who did this sort of thing for training.


There were no injuries during this phase. I only missed training during 90X filming, where I’d scheduled a break anyway, and the week following it when I got sick—about as good as I can expect in a five-month program.

what's next, buddy?

My break officially ends on June 1. The summer training schedule will be announced soon. If you plan to use Beachbody programs to prepare for any outdoor sports pursuit, particularly multi-sports, I’d recommend following along.

Recovering From Relaxing

Ah, it feels sublime to be tired and sore when you’ve gotten that way from activity. And when I get time to relax pretty much all I do is exercise. After ten days of gettin’ after it I lied in bed til nearly 8am, deciding after numerous false starts that my aching muscles needed a few more moments on snooze. Phase one of my year is in the books and now it’s time to play a bit while I decide what’s going to come next.

near lee's ferry.

the type of nav reading that makes me happy.


My schedule over the last ten days, generally, had me up by 5:30 and working ‘til it was warm enough to head out. Then climbing, riding, hiking, running, or driving until it got dark, followed by dinner and, finally, more work until my eyes would no longer stay open—usually by around 10.

my mobile office.

trails around sedona.


I think it’s safe to say that I don’t relax like most people. I’m not getting out as much as I once did so, when I’m on the road, I try and cram in as much into each day as possible. Over the last ten days I’ve ridden six new (for me) trail systems, gone to six new climbing areas, driven 2,000 miles, done one national championships race, and managed not to fall too far behind on work. In fact, it’s due to work I’m home now because there was more on the agenda. My computer died Tuesday night, prompting cancellation of this weekend’s little Grand Canyon sufferfest, and forcing me to high tail it home instead.

room with a view in tucson.

putting on my best special agent dale cooper impersonation at mom's, in salina. 'once a day, every day, give yourself a present...'


So now I’m back at the morning ritual: sitting on the computer, slowly sipping coffee, Finnegan by my side asking repeatedly if I’m ready to get outside yet. Today he’s going to have to wait longer than normal. But with temperatures on the rise, some good winter fitness in the bank, and longer days ahead I will be making this up to him. I don’t think he believes me.