Some Improvements with my Run

My run has never been good nor bad. It was just okay. After Santa Cruz 70.3 my coach and I started to focus a bit more on improving my overall fitness and working on my run legs.

On October 1 I race my first short distance tri in a while at the Mission Bay Triathlon. The run portion was a 9K loop around Mission Bay. I had my best run off the bike and though I was disappointed with my split, I was happy to see that I ran my fastest split at a triathlon.

We continued on with a good block including one to two track sessions a week and added a 5K in Huntington Beach (PR!) las week, and an open marathon at the Inaugural Vista Beer Half Marathon today.

It was a nice change of pace. Both runs were brutal in their own way. The 5K was just sheer pain and tons of lactic acid build up I just could not get rid of fast enough to get the legs moving faster. It was a good effort, though it was not as fast as I'd hoped, it was still a PR.

Today was my first half marathon since Carlsbad 1/2 in January. I ran the Inaugural Vista Beer 1/2 Marathon, and it did not disappoint. I did NOT expect that much climbing (1K ft total). I wanted to run faster than what I did at the Carlsbad 1/2, which was a PR back then, and I did just that. But there are just so many lessons learned that it is leaving me hungrier to get back to training and get faster. We started in the Buena Vista Park on dirt roads. That was fun, but then reality hit: there were some (lots of!) punchy hills, some "walls," and some fast downhills. I had a certain goal in mind, which I achieved, but I can't help but look at the areas for improvement.

The hills at the Vista Beer 1/2

In all, I'm excited for the last 3 weeks of training before Cabo. It feels like 70.3 fitness is coming back, and with the last few positive races I've had this month, I am hoping that I can continue on that trend and put my fitness to use at Cabo.

Happy Training Y'all!

Training with a new sense of motivation

This first season as a professional athlete has had its fair share of ups, and a lot of downs. I've seen some very promising progress and results that I did not expect to see in my first season. I was ecstatic after Oceanside and Tremblant, feeling like things were going really well.

But I have also learned valuable lessons the hard way. I have over thought some situations, highly questioned myself and the decision of going all in, and overall, I just did not trust myself and the process enough. It cost me a lot of discomfort, a lot of self doubt, and numerous sleepless nights. I always try to remind myself that patience is virtue, but it's funny sometimes how one can completely ignore his/her own "wise words." It is simply easier to fall in the "I am not good enough anyway, so why bother" or "there's no way I can get to their level" train wreck. I hopped on that train for most of the season, with periods being worse than others.

August was a rough month to say the least, with Boulder 70.3 being the turning point. I knew that something was off going into this race prep. Physically I was getting weaker week over week, and mentally I was in a dark place I did not think I could get out of. Being all in means that I swim, bike, run, eat, rest, and repeat every day (trained seven days a week until after Boulder), without a single source of income. Seeing my wife taking the burden of supporting the household was/is hard to cope with, even despite the fact that she is uber supportive of me pursuing my dream.

But back to Boulder and the "turning point":

• I tweaked my lower back during the scenic drive to Colorado. I did not think too much of it, but in hindsight, there were few factors that contributed to it. I was stressed out because I did not agree with the training approach that was used anymore. I questioned it and just merely did not trust the approach anymore. I am someone who needs to have a clear understanding of the approach and milestones needed to reach my goal (racing Kona as a pro). I have learned this year that I needed someone to really look at my training data for me and tell me when I do well or not, without sugar coding everything. In short, I no longer wanted to be the one trying to make sense of my training data, because my opinion was highly biased by how I felt on any given day
• I raced Boulder with no clear race strategy, and the race strategy I was given was not coherent with the difficulty of the race. 
• The race itself was the icing on the cake, and it just put on display all the difficulties I was facing. A slew of poor decisions on the swim which resulted in the lower back pain flaring up again in the water crushed the little confidence I had going in. I then proceeded to forget to take off my swim skin on the bike. My legs felt completely shut, and the lower back pain prevented me from going on the aerobars. I ended up free spinning the last 15 miles back to transition
• I walked from the dismount line to my bike rack. I tried running, but every step sent an acute pain up to my lower back. I lasted 1 mile before throwing in the towel. 

I took a few days completely disconnected from society, which includes people and the Internet. It was much needed. After a few days of reflection, I made the decision to make big changes because I still believed that I could improve and I still believe that I can be competitive in the sport. 

I changed coaches: I took the methodical approach to reach out to some coaches and give them some time to do their research about me before talking to them. I wanted to see who truly had an interest in helping me get to the next level. It was disappointing. Out of the few coaches I reached out to, only one did his due diligence of researching me and reading through my website. After speaking to him for a good 30 minutes and making sure that he would be vested in my progression, Mariesa and I made the decision to switch. His vision was much more optimistic and the goals he lined up for me exceeded my own goals. I was excited to hear a coach whose vision was bigger than mine. I knew that meant that he'd push me hard. Having worked with a coach that has a very hand-off approach worked when I was racing as an age grouper, but I realized that I needed someone who would be on my tail constantly, reading my training log, analyzing data, and designing a plan and sessions that are tailored to the goals and racing. Being a big proponent of data analysis, he sold me on his approach. It's been a big adjustment to work with TrainingPeaks and comment on each of my training, and seeing my coach commenting back. 

It's been two months now and I can now make sense of each training session. I have regained confidence in my biking thanks to very specific training sessions around 70.3 racing. I am starting to feel like my run is shaping up nicely. It is headed in the right direction. And the same goes for the swim. I have never been pushed harder than when starting to work with him, and I am feeling a lot more confident and faster in the water. 

I only focus on me, and my training. I decided to no longer look at a start list or browse Instagram and Facebook to see what everyone is doing. The main focus is now me, my training, and I am making an effort to remove any negativity that could affect me. It may sound stupid, but I have learned to realize this season that being all in has implications beyond the financial aspect of not bringing any income in: it has made me more susceptible to negative comments. I can't tolerate sarcastic comment or judgment when it comes to my triathlon results or training, because to me, those comments are critics of what I should call my career, and those hurt sometimes. I also fear disappointing people and myself a lot more. I no longer have my day to day to fall back to if triathlon does not go well, so everything gets amplified. In short, I am really trying to remove anything that could drive this fear and drive negativity, and I am also trying to surround myself with people and brands that genuinely want to see me succeed. 

It was a longer post than originally intended, but I hope this gives a bit of an update to anyone wondering what I've been up to since Boulder. 

Cabo 70.3 is next and I am VERY excited for it! 

Happy training all!