Monday, July 27, 2020

The path forward is clearer now....

Well, to no ones great surprise, Kona 2020 is not going to happen this year.  Anders and I will be transferring our entries to 10/9/2021.  So at the moment, we are both about 14-15 months our from our "A" race.

On the racing front, I actually have done two races this month--one a 1.2 mile swim and the other a sprint triathlon.  I'll update on both of those shortly but let me focus on the shift in the balance of my 2020 training focus given the Kona news.

As I mentioned, in my last post, in the middle of June it was increasingly clear that 2020 was going to be pretty much of a lost year as far as Triathlon racing (especially long course) and mountain climbing goes.  I've made the decision to generally back off of my training load in aggregate volume and in terms of intensity.  My focus is shifting to just staying in good shape and just having fun with my training as opposed to building my fitness for a specific goal.

This plays out differently across the three disciplines.  My swim volume is actually increasing with the regular access to OWS.  I won't be swimming as much as might have with an IM build but I am thinking about swimming across our Lake in Minnesota in a few weeks (that swim is over 6,000 yards) so I'm going to do a few longer swims over the next few weeks--I did Midge's 4,200 swim the other day in around 80 minutes (with no current).  Here  is my updated swim history for the 30 weeks of 2020 (trailing 4-week average):


My bike has been the biggest change--both in terms of volume but also, the length of my long ride.  I've shifted from Bike Monster (300+ mpw/100+ mile long rides) to what will likely be 200-250 mpw with a long ride of 50 miles or so....I'm actually in pretty good bike shape (as evidenced by my triathlon last week--more on that shortly) but just going to take it easy for the rest of the summer:


I'm also backing off the run/hike a bit as I had a bit of a knee issue post race and for the most part, I'll just run once a week or so to minimize wear and tear on my knee:



Not surprisingly, this translates into less aggregate training time....




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