2 weekends ago, I had the honor of doing my first tandem bike ride with my new friend Erich Manser. Erich is a blind triathlete from Leominster, MA. I heard about Erich from a mutual friend and I was immediately inspired by him and wanted to see if I could do anything to help him. I emailed Erich and we immediately hit it off and Erich seemed very excited for the opportunity for us to either do some training or racing together. We emailed a few times and setup a date to do our first tandem bike ride together. We ended up doing a ride together a couple weekends ago. I was a little nervous about driving the "big rig" but according to Erich, I did quite well and I had a blast. Erich is a great guy and I'm really looking forward to do some more training or racing with him. Hopefully more to come on this soon. As of right now, we're planning to do our first race together the weekend after I get back from St. George.
Over the past weekend, I attended the Multisport World Expo in Cambridge, MA. This is an annual event that is always a lot of fun and is a great way to kick off the triathlon season. My friend Mark Walters on Sun MultiSports Events puts on the event and he always does a terrific job with it. This year was no different. The event includes a team competition and my triathlon club, NorthEast MultiSport, competed again this year. Unfortunately I was not able to compete because it was right during the continued education courses (CEU's) I attended. Nonetheless, NEMS still did awesome and got 2nd place! Way to go guys!
During the continued education courses, there were 3 different presenters. This first presenter was Tim Crowley, one of, if not my favorite triathlon coach. Tim is a former USAT Coach of the Year and currently coaches the #1 ranked US ITU racer, Jarrod Shoemaker who is expected to be representing the US in the Olympics this summer in London. Tim has an amazing passion for the sport and it is very addictive! You can tell how much he cares about triathlon and helping his athletes and other coaches for that matter, which I absolutely love. I have also emailed with Tim a few times over the years and he always gets right back to me right away, which is really cool. Unfortunately I can't say the same for some other coaches out there. Tim spoke about ITU racing (Olympic style racing), which is a lot different than normal triathlon because drafting is allowed on the bike. The training and scheduling for this style racing, for elite athletes anyways, is much different so Tim talked about how it differs and gave some advice on scheduling. I don't see myself coaching any ITU focused athletes anytime soon, but you never know!
Jorge Martinez, a friend of mine, and a great coach from Boston spoke next and discussed run mechanics. Jorge went into great detail about running form and I learned quite a bit from his presentation. Lastly, another friend/coach from Boston, Matt Giunta spoke about WKO+, some training software for analyzing data. I knew most of the stuff he discussed already, but I did learn a few things that were pretty cool. Matt is an extremely intelligent guy and I was impressed with his presentation as well.
After the CEU courses were over, I got a chance to hear Mark Allan speak. Unfortunately, I wasn't overly impressed with Mark's presentation. For those of you that do not know who Mark Allan is, he is considered to be the greatest triathlete EVER. So yeah, he's kind of a big deal! However, his presentation was really just a review of his career and watching him win his 6 Ironman World Championships. He did seem to be a very nice guy, but I just didn't find his presentation all that special. He plugged his book and his coaching, but there wasn't much that was insightful during his talk.
The next day, I took a half day clinic with Mark. I was a bit hesitant to sign up for the clinic, but decided that I shouldn't pass up the opportunity to spend 3-4 hours with the greatest triathlete of all time, especially when only 20 people were allowed in the clinic. We started off in the MIT pool for a swim clinic. The MIT pool is absolutely amazing so just getting to swim in that pool may have made it worth while. Mark did give some very basic tips, but I didn't find too much benefit in it. It was basically just like a technique focused workout I would give with minimal review from him. Nonetheless, I think some of the less experienced attendees seemed to find it helpful. It did make me feel good about the swim workouts I provide and the instruction I am able to give my clients and people in my triathlon swim class at the Y.
After that, we headed to the MIT indoor track from some running instruction. Again, most of the things he went over were relatively basic. However, I actually did learn a few things that I really liked during this part of the instruction. He gave some drills that work on strengthening your feet. PTC athletes, don't be surprised if prescribe some of these for you in the near future.
Lastly, we went back downstairs to review bike fit. This was extremely elementary, but there were a few interesting things that I took out of it. After that, he did open things up to any questions and I did ask him a few questions. He kinda contradicted himself during one of my questions, but he did make it very clear that he is an extremely intelligent guy and knows a thing or two about triathlons. I'm not sure I would take the clinic again, but it was definitely a unique experience. Here is a picture of Mark and I:
My Training
Overall, the last 2 weeks of my training have gone very well. The first week was a recovery week for the most part. However, my run volume still stay relatively high. The past week was a high volume run week and I ended up putting in just over 50 miles, which I believe it a new high for me. It has definitely been a challenge to get all my training in with everything else I have going on. However, I have not missed any workouts and continue to just take it one week at a time. I need to send out a special thank you to my fiance Kristen during these big training volume weeks. With all my training and coaching, there are some days that we pretty don't see each other only sleep in the same bed. Sometimes I don't do a good enough job showing her how much I appreciate her understanding and her allowing me to devote so much time to triathlon. Here is a review of my training for the past 2 weeks:
Week 1
Monday-
45' Spin Class- had to cover a class for another Y instructor that couldn't make it
Tuesday-
Bike: 70.2 miles in 3:36:48
Run: 5 mile ROTB in 36:25
Wednesday-
Bike: 40' spin class
Swim: 1800 yards in 30'
Thursday-
Strength: 1:15 at DSC
Swim: 3000 yards in 53:08
Run: 10 miles in 1:14:09
Friday-
Bike: 45' spin class
Swim: 2450 in 40'
Saturday-
Bike: First tandem ride with Erich. We rode 30.45 miles in 1:31:34.
Bike: Did another ride when I got back from Erich's. 40.49 miles in 1:52:51
Sunday-
Run: 20 miles in 2:23:15
Week 2
Monday-
Off Day, but did a lot of stretching and foam rolling
Tuesday-
Bike: 80.02 miles in 4:00
Wednesday-
Bike: 40' spin class
Run: 14 miles in 1:41:13
Thursday-
Strength- 1:20 at DSC
Swim- 4600 yards in 1:27:05
Run- 10 miles in 1:12:05
Friday-
Bike: 45' spin class
Swim: 3600 yards in 1:05:32
Saturday-
Bike: 40 miles in 2:06:10 on computrainer on IMSG course.
Run: 3 mile ROTB in 21:29
Sunday-
Swim: At least 1000 meters at swim clinic
Run: About 2 miles during run clinic
Run 21.2 miles in 2:28:12- Pushed it on this one to keep my pace at sub 7/min miles. This will be my longest run in prep for IM St. George.