Days Since Florida / 70.3 Boise Preview

What’s up y’all!?  I realized it had been awhile since the insane 70.3 Florida race weekend, so I figured I should put something else up here before you waves of news-hungry fans start to loiter, scratch your heads aimlessly and cast about for a better blog to follow.

Random running pic to get you all in the right state of mind.
This is actually from 2008, but I still wear that same cute onesy.

I’ll start with what I’ve been up to lately.

After four straight weekends of traveling and racing back in April/May, it has been really nice to have two consecutive weekends here in Portland.  I’ve done my best to put this nice little three-week window to good use, taking a few solid steps forward (although I may have also taken one or two backward).  In an effort to be totally transparent to my constituents, here is what I’ve done with the 18 days since getting my ass kicked all over Florida by a Tour de France winner:

Day 1: Long journey home, with lots of quality time spent in the Orlando, Albuquerque, and Vegas airports; some of you might worry that I developed a gambling problem while in Vegas, but that wasn’t really an issue because slot machines really bum me out.

Days 2-5: Back to my desk job, some easy swimming and recovery workouts, watched that “Harvard Baseball Team covers Call Me Maybe” youtube video way too many times.

Days 6-7: Cousin’s bachelor party! Hardly got any sleep and had way, way too much fun; only exercise was 18 holes of golf, unless you want to count exercising my liver.  Yeah, solid step backward.

Dan the Man's getting married! (center)
I'm the only one who actually struck an offensive pose (guess)

Days 8-12: Another work week, and squeezed a good block of training in between the Florida-recovery and Boise-taper weeks, oh yeah!

Day 13: Longest ride of the year to date, pre-rode Rev3 Portland bike course from my house, and it is so bomb!  Pristine roads, punchy climbs, an all-around tough test.  Didn’t take enough food, bonked hard, crawled home, that part sucked.


Day 14: And on Sunday, this stooge rested.

Days 15-18: Just finishing up another work week here, eating a lot of enchiladas in the evenings, and have a fantastic mini-taper going in the lead-up to Boise 70.3 this Saturday!

Plans for the next couple days include brewing beer, driving to Boise, eating, and sleeping.  I don’t mind any of those activities, let me tell you.

You have no idea how good this sort of thing smells.
Unless, of course, you've ever been to a brewery.
Chances are you actually have a very good idea, sorry.

So that’s what a three-week block between races looks like for this triathlete.  Hope I didn’t overdo it on that long ride last weekend, because I’m still feeling pretty depleted.  But it could also just be symptomatic of this little taper week.  Counter-intuitively, restful weeks before races often make the body feel exhausted and sleepy, because it’s so busy rebuilding and replenishing.  I sure hope so anyway, or else Saturday is going to be a long day at the office.

70.3 Boise Preview

I consider this to be my “home race,” so it definitely holds a special place in my heart.  I’m a little bummed, actually, to be racing this year as an Oregonian (it says “Portland, OR” next to my name on the start list).  I may live in Oregon, but I’m definitely an Idahoan for life.  These are my home roads.  I’ll have lots of friends in the crowd, volunteering at the swim start, and lining the run course.  And when it’s all over I get to relax on my patio with my family, eat some meat and drink my favorite beer in the whole wide world (Sockeye Brewery’s Dagger Falls IPA, Idaho’s standard-bearing IPA!  Booyah!)

Good Will Hunting?  Anybody?  Anyone at all?
At least I know my sibs will get it.

It’s also really going to hurt.  The forecast is for wind, but that’s hardly new for the desert south of Boise.  More significantly, the men’s start list is at 30 right now, including Tim O’Donnell, Paul Matthews, Matt Lieto, Kevin Everett, Chris Bagg, and about 25 other extremely fast dudes.  As always, I hope to perform to my potential, to grow from my first two outings, and maybe achieve some personal bests on my home course.  Actually... truth be told, I'd really like to uncork a screaming fast run.  Been feeling good in training lately, so if I'm well rested this may be the (crossing my fingers and knocking on wood) race I finally hit my stride.  Beyond that I can’t control much else, so we’ll see how it all comes together.  Tune in next week for another race report.  Until that time, as Ben Affleck would say, keep your ear to the grindstone.

Andrew