Secret training in Germany

Well I can't believe its almost here. In only one and a half weeks we'll be on the big island. 5 days later my knees will be shaking and "BOOM" the cannon will fire for the Super Bowl of Triathlon. Nervous? You betcha. Confident? You betcha. I'm really confident I've put in the training needed to finish this thing. My running has come around and I feel like I can put in a good marathon effort. My biking peaked about a week early but no worries, I'm strongest in that discipline. I've also come to terms with my open water swimming and can't wait to swim in some open water that you can actually see the guy next you you (and the guy next to him!).

I'm just nervous about the heat and my performance in the heat. We've had a pretty mild summer and I've not really been able to "acclimate" at all or even ride/run in the heat to much to get a good feel for how my performance will be. Its all about racing the clock and executing my plan to perfection. I've never really had a bad IM experience and I don't really want to have one now. That's what I'm really nervous about. But hey, confidence reigns over nerves any day. Plus, my wife, my mom, and some of my closest friends will be there supporting me. That's huge.

To make things more difficult, I had a business trip to Germany planned for mid September and I was a little nervous about the timing. 4 weeks out from the race. That should have been my biggest training week as far as volume, and how could I do anything half way across the earth in a place I've never been and with an agenda that wasn't geared toward my training needs. I basically overtrained myself for the 3 weeks leading up to my trip. 120 mile rides, 2 hour runs, 3-4 days/wk swimming. And thankfully IM Wisconsin was in there so I was able to ride that beast of a course. Good training for sure. I really put a lot in the bank so I planned to make my Germany trip a rest week with some run focus if I could get it in.

I left on Sunday the 21st and since I was tired from Rossi's bachelor party the night before my flight, I slept just about the whole way over. Our team visited three different suppliers across Germany and made one domestic flight from Leipzig to Frankfurt. With all that travel, I was still able to get three good runs in with the last one being 1.5hrs (2 mi warm up, 3mi at 10k pace, 1m easy, 3mi at 10k pace, 2 mi cool down). I was excited to be able to get all this in. On my return flight I stayed up the whole time since we landed at 4:30pm in Chicago. By the time I got home I was wiped out. I planned for a long ride the next day if I felt like I could do it. Well, I felt good the next day so I headed out for my last long ride, planning to do the Miles of Smiles 100 route starting from my house. I made it about 4.5 hours into that ride and I completely hit the wall. I think the jet lag caught up to me and no riding for a week probably didn't help either.

I've got one last long run in and I'm going to try to get 20 miles in at the Tri-Shark course. I've done this as my last long run the past two years before IM and it has worked out great. I feel like my running has come around and hope I can carry that over to the big island. As far as my injury report goes, the sports hernia seems to be at bay for now. No real big pains other than some nagging pain and tightness of my right groin muscle. It bugs me a little but I've been able to push it aside and focus on the task at hand. I won't be worried about it.

One more post before I leave. Yee hee!!