Slow news day. Got in a nice little ride in Seattle on the BG and then a smoking hot 5K in the park. The last two workouts leading up to Saturday's Oly Tri down at Hagg Lake. I am officially into taper, sad because I was looking forward to Tony's spin class tomorrow morning. Just for the sake of drama, my PR at Hagg Lake is 2:25 set way back in 1997 when I was a real triathlete (as compared to the super-geezer class AG hacker that I am today). So I have a bogey of sorts with which to contend. Oh yeah, it's me vs me. One would think that I would have learned that lesson with the old-timers baseball dressing down. But nooooooo, back for more self inflicted ego abuse. And ya know what? It's OK. Sure I like the training and testing component, the challenge, the competition and the camaraderie, but more that anything, I like the thrill. I like to race. It is as simple as that. I like getting answers the hard way. I like proving to my delicate and hyper-sensitive ego what my body already knows.
It knows that I am not going to get any faster. Not no how and not no way. It also knows that I am working twice as hard to keep what I once had. My body knows the utter futility of trying to beat my PR on that difficult course. A mark set when some of the VBA weren't even with us. Or at least legal to drink with us.
That should be motivation enough to give best efforts every time out there. You may not get another chance. Go for it . Go hard. Give all you got. Suffer a little. In twenty years you will thank yourself for the memories.
So Saturday I will have fun putting all this pre-test into play. The strategy is pretty much the same as with Boise with the exception that I will hammer a little harder on the bike (this surprises you?) and then try to keep a steady sub-threshold pace for the hilly 6.2. That will tell the tale. If I can go comfortably hard (another oxymoron) for the run, I will do fine. A this point it isn't so much about getting faster as it is about losing what you have slower. Most of the guys in my age group know this. It applies to hair and money too. I wonder how many of them that will be there Saturday were there in 1997?
On the international circuit, here is a beautiful website/service from NSW, OZ. I followed a link from one of the power user forums and found this. Imagine my surprise when I flipped through the pages and found no less than three of my videos on the site.
Yo Alex, I have a lot more recent and updated stuff from which you might get additional value.
Just let me know. Welcome to the family. Power onward.
2 comments:
You might like this report:
OBJECTIVES: To show that elite master (age above 50) male and female athletes, as a group, have improved their running times over the last two decades at a greater rate than their younger counterparts.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15273172
There are a lot of variables in that test. Read: Elite masters, over twenty years. That alone means that the study was during their 30s&40s, when other factors could be in play. Right? I will look at the entire article after nature tries to prove to me again this morning that time wounds all heels.
Thanks for the link. Maybe there's hope.
Post a Comment