Friday, September 5, 2008

The Last Month


I kind of forget where I left off with my last post, but I will start with Cornerbrook 70.3. This was the first race of the year that I truly felt ready for, leading into every other race this year I had always had setbacks because of my knee but I had been running regularly for the last month and was starting to feel confident in it. I had a pretty easy flight getting in late friday night, and getting settled into my host housing.
The race it's self went pretty well to plan, I made one mistake in the swim and let Brent and Paul Mathews get away so I ended up doing the whole swim on my own. I had a good transition and started out on the bike, within the first 10km Richie and Craig caught me so I tried to pick up the pace and keep them close. Craig was on a mission and he was setting a pace that Richie and I could not match. Richie and I rode the rest of the way together eventually getting caught by Chris Legh. Onto the run I started out pretty well but hit a bad patch at around the 8km mark. I was able to pull out of it but needed to find a portajon and fast, luckly there was one at about the14km mark and I made a beeline for it. After the fact, I was feeling a lot better and was able to really pick up the pace. I was holding it pretty well until about 2km to go, I struggled through it and crossed the line in 4th, it was the first time I was able to really let it all hang out all summer and it felt good to cross the line without any what ifs.
After getting home I was really excited to put in some more speed work to get fast for nationals. But as luck would have it after a workout of 6x1km, 90min tempo bike, 20min tempo run, my knee started to feel tight and the pain was back. This hit me really hard, I was finally starting to pick up some momentum and excitement for the rest of the season then I get hit with the injury again.
I did not run for 2 weeks leading into Kelowna and knew the only chance I had was opening up a big gap on the bike. This almost came true as I was in a lead group with McMahon and Wells but we just did not have enough to stay away from a motivated chase pack with a lot of other Canadians. So you can imagine where my motivation went when we got caught, but I still managed to be first out of transition onto the run!! I still ran hard but did not have the little extra push.
Right now I am sitting in my basement room in Hamilton after finishing my first day of classes in the last 2 years, having battles in my head about whether or not I should race the Muskoka 70.3.
Other then that I am looking forward to seeing Krystal in less then a week, although I know it will be very limited it is still better then nothing

2 comments:

Turq said...

s - drop me a line - glynn (gturquand@gmail.com)

A-Russ said...

A 70.3 in your house! you gotta do it. Make them Hurt!