August/September/October catch-up

Wow, hard to believe that two months have passed since my last post.  I just finished the NYC marathon and will post a race report over the next day or two.  This post will review Aug-Oct.  First off-here are the training volume updates:

After the Rainier 29029 event, I continued my swim training, as much as time permitted (I had three weddings to attend over the last three months, including one in Spain, and also had trips to Minnesota and Portugal (and my usual work trips to NYC and trips to visit my new grandson).  

While in Minnesota, I swam across our Lake again and managed to take 11+ minutes off of my time in 2024.  I think this is about the 10th time I've done this 3+ mile swim, although several were before I started tracking such swims with my Garmin.  I've done it 7 times since 2014 and you can see how my times have trended over time.  The notable thing about this year is I swam a much straighter course (which is a lot harder than one might think until one is starring across 3+ miles of open water with 1-2 foot waves in front of you!)

In any event, I followed that up with a very solid Cedar Mile Island 5k swim where I beat my main competitor, Dan Fabrizio by 12 seconds as I swam a 68:01 to his 68:13.  This was quite satisfying as he had beaten me by 67 seconds over 1.2 miles earlier this year.  Part of this is I'm more of an endurance swimmer than him (the longer the better) and also my shoulder has been able to handle some pretty good training volume this year--especially compared to last year (up 83%).  This brings my overall H2H OWS record against Dan to 6-3.  I'm 2-0 at 5k and 4-3 at the 1.2-mile swim distance.

I plan to put some modest volume in for the balance of the year--hopefully about 10k/month and then will begin to ramp again in January--my shoulder willing!

My bike training has trended very similar to 2025 as I have focused on swim and run/walk much more the last two years--this was especially true in 2026 when I did no triathlons.

With my 29029 focus as my "A" event, my run/walk volume (mostly the later) continues to be quite strong (post knee replacement, any ways) and I'm currently up about 9% vs. 2025.  Part of this is I continued with higher volume in 2026 the last two months as I still had the NYC Marathon to pursue.  I did run the 7-mile Kerr race on Labor Day and this was my longest continuous run since my knee-replacement.  I did a 74:15 or around 10:30/mile (logged 7.1 miles)

I've started to ramp up by weights/PT training again in October and through the end of the month am about 6% lower than last year.  Overall training time is pretty similar to last year as I'm about 19 hours lower so far in 2026 or about 2%.

I'm now in my transition phase and will begin to craft my 2027 plans over the next few weeks--I have some big plans for next year, when I turn 70!

Onwards and Upwards!