Money in the Bank!

A quick note to bring you up to speed from last weekend.

I raced last Saturday in the Pine Barrens Olympic Triathlon. As I reported, I had my best race of 2010 and got a real morale boost from the effort. The Mid-Atlantic Ratings are posted and it turns out that this was my 3rd highest rated triathlon in their ranking system. They've rated 39 of my triathlons to date. My best (in any way i can think to measure) remains my "perfect" race at the 2007 White Lake Half-Ironman.

Anyways, I was pumped and got a little carried away with an aggressive run the next day and then while moving stuff in the house threw my back out real bad. (Life as a 53 YO!). I'll return to the back in a second but my totals for last week were:

10,200 yards swimming
216 miles on the bike
27.2 miles running
19:42 training time

The training time fell 1 hour short of plan due to my back.

The plan for this week, my final big week before Kona, was 29 hours. However, I had to adapt a bit to the reality of my back. The pain was quite severe this time--I was unable to sleep at all on Sunday night. Fortunately, I saw my Orthopod first thing on Monday for my 2nd Syn-Visc injection of this cycle and he gave me some Skellaxan and that combined with a lot of ice got things under control.

I scrapped my Monday and Tuesday plans and focused on "protecting" my four key w/os for this week: Long ride, long run and two hard swim workouts. My back was tender but progressively better and I was able to get the following in:

Tuesday: 4000 yard swim--continuous in pool
Wednesday: 6:30 bike ride
Thursday: 3000 yard swim with a lot of interval work
Today: 3+ hour run (which is the longest training run I have ever had as a triathlete)

The run today was quite strong--I averaged 9 minute miles and was able to down 100 ounces of IM Performance--the drink they'll stock the Aid Stations at Kona with.

I did a few other w/os as well but getting these 4 done gets the real heavy lifting for Kona off my plate and is truly money in the fitness Bank! I know that I now am more than physically fit enough for Kona--22 days from today.

I'm at 17 hours so far this week and will probably log 25 by the end of the day Sunday. I'll probably still train fairly hard through Wednesday of next week and then execute my taper for Kona. I'm looking at 13-15 hours next week. Probably 9-11 the following week and 5 hours or so race week. I'll probably do 2-3 more rides in the 2.5-3.5 hour range and a run or two of 75 minutes or so (the rest of the bikes and runs will be short). I'll do 2-3 more 4000ish swims--hopefully, one open water.

Getting down to the icing on the cake at this point....