Dead Legs

Raced the local Stone Harbor Sprint Tri yesterday--nothing like rolling out of bed just 0.54 miles from transition!

As expected I had no pop in the legs (or my swim) yesterday. I'll post a short race report in the next day or two but I was a bit surprised at how dead my legs were. I was a good 5 minutes slower than "normal" (I've done this race 5 times before). As an example of what I'm talking about, my watts only averaged around 190 even though my HR was in the low 160s...this is a good 60+ watts less than that effort usually delivers.

No real surprises coming just two weeks after a very hot and demanding IM in Germany but I was a bit taken aback by how little zip I had. I may be one of those guys who takes a long time to recover from an IM.

In any event, as I previously posted, I intended the SH triathlon to be a "line in the sand" marking a return to serious training and (after 4 weeks "off"--the 2 week taper and 2 week recovery from IM Germany)--and so today was the start of the push for Kona--the 3rd mega-cycle of my training year. I'm 81 days away from the big show as of this Monday.

After an intense hour with my PT guy--I was drenched in sweat...(BTW--I really think this is going to work...the really good news from the race yesterday is i was able to ride in race mode with little of the pain I had experienced at IM Germany. My glutes and ITB were very tight still--I definitely noticed them--but this was probably more a function of the intense workouts I had last week...we'll see)...anyways, after the PT I rode my bike for 3:40 in the mid-day heat and humidity (it was about 92 degrees and quite humid--and windy as well). I'm not saying I was a champ on this ride but I got her done--obviously good work for the conditions at Kona.

Besides getting 4 more sprints in before Kona (I know this is silly but I think it would be cool to have Kona be my 100th triathlon) I only have eyes for Kona now. It's great to simplify things. From a triathlon perspective, the only thing that matters now is getting across that finish line on October 9th--and that's the way we are going to run things from here on out.