It's been a while since I last updated my own journey of fitness and athletics. So I want to dedicate this post to letting you all know my own progress and the philosophies that I am implementing and how it is working in myself. After all is said and done, as an athlete my progress is essential to my success and as a trainer, I am nothing unless my methods at least work within myself.



These past couple weeks have been more stressful mentally than anything. Balancing life and business and training has it's difficulties and it seems that lately everything that can possibly disrupt the scheduling and priorities has attempted to do so. I have largely found the major gap in my training and it is the one that I myself preach the most to my clients... mental strength. I have an extremely positive outlook on my training and future, I approach my sessions with my goals for the day in mind and focus on accomplishing them, where I have found this gap is more in my general focus outside of training. Keeping the big picture in mind to the way I attack the day. My prescription for myself is a little more meditation, a little more time apart to focus on my long term goals and more reflection on my progress to see if I am heading in the right direction.

Physically I am most happy with my progress swimming. I keep feeling like I'm cutting the water a little better and my strokes keep getting longer and more fluid. Because of these improvements in technique I am getting faster on my interval splits when in the pool. Good times! I am also pretty happy with the bike, even with the old machine I still have to use, again my splits are getting faster and I have more power upon acceleration. all things that have come from building more base fitness with these parts of my race.

I have been putting most of my focus on the swim portion as it has been my weakness. I still have a ways to go, but my confidence and performances in the water tell me that it is no longer a worry, rather a soft spot I need to improve. Unfortunately because of so much focus in the water and on the bike, I haven't had many improvements running. Something that during these next few weeks in going to change.

One thing I have been focusing on with my base training has been intervals and longer distances. Trying to create an improvement in technique and strength through the technique. This way as I begin to push the envelope and increase the threshold of my limits my technique will allow my body to handle the abuse and not cause any overuse injuries. I plan on pushing my limits adjusting my approach to my weekly training slightly. As nothing is better for triathlons than just swimming, biking, and running, the core of training will be dedicated to such. However, at the end of training sessions, especially longer endurance work, tempo and speed intervals will be incorporated to train the fast twitch muscles. Keeping the different fiber types trained and strong adds more than one dimension to kind of race I can run. Having an extra gear to create distance, accelerate out of harsh conditions, and have a more reactive response the start of the different events. This will also push my anaerobic threshold giving me a better fitness level when my body needs to utilize the different energy systems (energy efficiency being of utmost importance for endurance races).

A sample training session will look a little like this:
15 minute Warm-up (mobility circuit)
-Running session: 6 miles @ 6:30 pace
-10x150m @80% top speed/1min rest
15 minute Cool Down

2 mile run in the evening

Time to get after it... Kona is coming up soon and then starts the off season for most triathletes, but there is no off season, there is just time to train more!

Every Day... A Little Stronger