Thursday

I fell asleep last night a bit after 9pm, with a bit of help from some Tylenol pm, and besides awakening a few times briefly, I didn't get up until 7am. I can't remember the last time I lied down for this long!

My father and headed down to the beach to get a swim in. the wind was blowing again and the ocean was very choppy, rolling in diagonally northwest. The swim is a clockwise rectangle and the current was pushing us far out to the left. I'll swim again tomorrow to see if this stays consistent, and if so, plan accordingly for race day. It was cold out this morning here - probably in the low 50's. My back was sore/tender while swimming which was odd. It may be rebelling from lying down for so long.

I'm anxious to see how things go on Saturday. I'm not nervous and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. Usually, I have some butterflies going into a race. My training for this 1/2 was very unorthodox - mostly out of experimentation. I have been in this sport for a long time and have studied training and exercise physiology and one thing I have learned is that you need to switch things up occasionally, not only for physical benefits but also mentally. To be more specific about what I did different, since Timberman in August, I have only ridden over 2 hrs on four occasions - the Vermont ride and while in Hawaii. Most of my rides have been in the 90 minute range. They have all been intense though, and instead of riding junk mileage for the sake of logging in more weekly mileage, I didn't ride on those days. On average, I rarely rode over 100 miles per week. However, once again, I payed close attention to my wattage, HR and rpm's on all rides and rode with some decent intensity. I did quite a few rides on my computrainer as well. Same with running - I reduced the volume and ran closer to goal race pace more often. We'll see if this works for the 1/2 IM. For an IM, you need the volume. If you have been in this sport for awhile, most likely you have built some accumulative base. At the beginning of the season, it's important to re-establish your aerobic base, but the longer you have been in this sport, the shorter the amount of time you'll need to re-establish this at the beginning of the season. Then, you can focus more on quality.

The day seemed busy but has been mostly lazy. We swam, had some breakfast, relaxed a bit. I received through FedEx the My Athlete devices from John and his tech guy Eric, and I charged them for a bit and then tested them out to see if John could get a lock on each device (which he did). there will be five of us racing with them on Saturday. Then Jimmy and I headed out to Jamba Juice, Borders for a bit, then Starbuck's, then I received a call from Chris Swift and Ian Ray that they had arrived - they were driving Chris's RV down from CT with a bunch of our bikes on board. So I got my bike now. One bummer is that I forgot my cable on my bike that connects my power meter to the sensors, so I'm racing without my powermeter on Saturday. Oh well. I then stopped at a tri shop and tried out the new Zoot running shoes which are really, really nice although not available until 2008, and now I'm relaxing and catching up on some work before heading out for an easy 30 minute run. Then we are meeting Ed Sparkowski out for dinner.

There are triathletes everywhere down here today, and a ton of foreigners.

We need a Jamba Juice in CT!

Cheers,

EH