The Final Countdown

Only 20 days remain until IM Lake Placid. My taper is in full swing and best news yet, my ankle is healing quite nicely. After two rest days (Thursday and Friday last week) I decided that things were healing faster than I expected and I decided to proceed on as planned with my regular scheduled workouts. But first let me tell you that the Tour of Pennsylvania Bike Race was in town this weekend and my company sponsored one of the professional teams, Konica Minolta from South Africa. Friday night I was invited out to dinner with the team. I met the team in Greensburg PA at Sunset Cafe for a nice hearty Italian dinner. The team's spirits were extremely high as Christoff Van Heerden, the team leader, came away that day with the yellow and green jersey. I spent a lot of the evening talking about racing at that level, and it was really cool to get the perspective from some high caliber athletes. Christoff and one of the other guys actually came from a Triathlon background so we chatted about that as well. Although Christoff lost the yellow the next day, he still took 2nd overall in the race across the state.

Saturday morning Jen and I drove about an hour north of Pittsburgh to Moraine State park for the annual Pitt 2 mile open water swim. My goal for the swim was to swim the race at or around my IM pace. Not too hard, but not too easy either. Having not kicked with the black and blue ankle I wasn't sure how I'd do in the water, but once I got going I had little to no problems. The swim course was an out and back swim. When I hit the turn-around buoy at mile 1 I glanced down at my watch and it read just under 25 minutes. I was right on pace and figured if I finished around 50 minutes I would be happy for the day. I came out of the water around 53 minutes (stronger current on way back) feeling great.

Workout #2 of the day was a five hour ride. Matt Mauclair (another top notch local Ironman athlete) and I set off on the bike ride and were clipping off the miles at a nice pace. At times (with the tailwind) on the flats we were averaging above 30mph. The ride was a good variety of nice aerobic pace as I spent around one hour in zone 3, two hours in zone 2, and two hours in zone 1.

Around four hours into the ride my legs were still fresh....a very good sign! We pulled into the North Shore parking lot five hours after our initial departure and Matt and I quickly transitioned to a 45 minute run. I wasn't sure what pace we were running but it felt fast. My legs were turning over with ease and my heart rate was staying low. I babied my ankle on the corners and didn't have much discomfort.

6 hours and 35 minutes after the start of the swim this morning, my day was finally complete! We finished just in time too. Not even five minutes after we got done running, the sky opened up and the rain began to fall. Once we got home and cleaned ourselves up we headed over to my friends house for a BBQ. It was raining so we had to move the festivities indoor, but it was still a lot of fun. It was relaxing to for once not talk about racing and to spend a night with the guys opposed to the normal 9AM bed time on a Saturday night.

Sunday morning came and went just as fast as Saturday. We were awake early as usual and Jen whipped up a batch of her famous whole wheat blueberry waffles with pure maple syrup! Ummmm my favorite! After a peaceful morning it was getting time to head to the pool. Sundays swim was an easy 45 minutes. You know, those super slow workouts where the old guy in lane six could give you a run for your money. I left the pool, picked up my buddy Paul and headed off to downtown Pittsburgh for stage 6 of the Tour of Pennsylvania. I met some work friends on the Southside of town and we met up with the Konica Minolta one last time for lunch. I was surprised to see them eat so much pasta right before a big race, but I guess your stomach doesn't move around as much on the bike opposed to swimming and running. They were loving their trip to the states as it was the first time here for many of them. After lunch we headed into town for the 35 lap crit race. There was a little bit of rain and a tornado warning which postponed the race briefly half way through, but overall it was really cool to see them guys blaze past a speeds of over 30 mph.

So that's my weekend. Another crazy, but fun weekend. I'm looking forward to my taper, and I head up to Lake Placid this Friday for a weekend of pure training. Next weekend will be my last weekend of hard training as I gear up for my biggest race of the season. It should be a fun one! Time to get in the zone!

posted by Chad Holderbaum @ 8:32 AM Comments: 1