Sorry for the lengthy period off radio silence. Lots has been going on over the two months that we've been back from Bolivia. This post will hopefully bring you up to speed on where things are at!
1. Crashes/Surgery/IM plan changes
The biggest news, I guess, is the bike crashes that Anders and I suffered. Mine not so bad, his of more consequence.
On July 16th I was at 58 miles into a 100 mile ride, rolling into a WaWa parking lot to refill my water bottles, and I had one hand on my aerobars when I hit a bump and went down hard on my left shoulder and hip. I wasn't going very fast so minor road rash. My shoulder sustained a Grade 1 Separation, which wasn't too bad. My hip got a big hematoma, which finally, after about 3 weeks is slowly going away. My TT bike's front-end got messed up but I was able to ride it home (bars pointed crooked) with my left arm resting on my right, due to shoulder pain. Bike is repaired and after two weeks, I was able to start swimming again. Run and bike only modestly impacted. I was lucky (and dumb for crashing).
Anders, was not so lucky. He was at mile 42 on the bike ride at Santa Rosa70.3 on 7/27 when someone dropped a water bottle right in front of him while he had one hand on his aerobars and was moving about 25 mph (he was having a great race having swum sub 33 and was on a 2:20 bike leg when he went down). He went down hard hitting his shoulder, hip and head. Thankfully, the helmet did its job but the impact fractured his collarbone. I flew out to LA a week ago (I'm heading home tomorrow) to help and he had what appears to be a successful surgery to put it back together again last Tuesday.
He should be fine in the long run, but will have a 8-week or so recovery processes. He can go on walks now, will be able to do light riding on the trainer next week and probably can begin jogging in 3-4 weeks. Swimming will come last.
Not surprisingly, this means Barcelona is out for him, and given that I am likely to pull out of that race as well. We are evaluating whether or not he can get ready for IM Arizona in late November, and if so, we will both probably make that our IM target for 2019.
Obviously, this is a real bummer given how fit he already was but he has adjusted to the new reality and focused on the comeback. Bad injury for sure, but could have been a lot worse, so we are thankful it wasn't!
2. Training Update
Anders and I spent some time in Bolivia talking about my training approach for Barcelona (now probably Arizona) and decided on what we called the "Bike Monster" strategy. Essentially, I'd build my 2019 IM build around my bike training and specifically, I'd build up to 20+ hours/week on my bike with one 100+ mile ride/time trial each week. The swim and run would be more "fit in" around that foundation. For the swim, my plan was to get to 40-50k yards per month by July and try to build my run up enough that I could run the half marathon at IMAC70.3 in September. We believe that this will give me a good chance a qualifying for Kona--I'll share more on that plan when we get closer to race time.
Prior to the events of the the last couple of weeks I was executing well against this strategy. Here are the 8 weeks (ending on 7/28) post Bolivia bike stats:
Week Time Distance Average Speed Long Ride Distance Long Ride Speed
1 17:22 287 16.5mph 58 16.5mph
2 18:47 304 16.2 86 16.4
3 21:06 350 16.6 84 16.9
4 20:21 336 16.5 91 16.7
5 19:16 338 17.5 100 17.2
6 21:15 383 18.0 100 19.3
7 21:01 371 17.7 101 18.6
8 15:35 269 17.3 74 17.7
You can clearly see the nice fitness build as by week 6 I was doing 19+ mph for my long ride (the 18.6 in week 7 was the ride I crashed on). Since my goal for my IM this year is to do 20+mph (5:36 split or better), I'm basically pretty much already there as with race wheels/tires and an aero helmet and tri-suit, I'll probably be at least 1mph faster. so this has been a big success.
I started building my swim in July and was on my way to 40k+ when I had to take two weeks off for the shoulder problem. I've started swimming again out here in Santa Monica and will ramp up quickly--no worries. I'm also now staring to build up my run/hike volume. Here are what the last two months look like:
Time (hrs) Swim (k yds) Bike (miles) Run (miles)
June 103 21 1,385 46
July 106 23 1,444 70
3. 50th Age Group win!
I raced at the Belleplain Super sprint triathlon in June and won my Age Group for the 50th time. this was a really low key short triathlon and I won my Age Group by nearly 20 minutes. I finished 6th overall. I also recored a 8:36/mile run leg so not so bad for me given my knee....
Onward and Upward!
