live & direct: I've heard the first time can be painful

Well, after reading the blogs of some friends, I decided to start my own. I'm not really sure what to write about so I figure that for now, I'll just go ahead and give people a little update on the last semester.

Last fall was the semester from hell. Way too many hard classes at once. I barely survived but managed to get the best grades I've ever gotten in college. All I cared about was that it was over and that this spring semester would be full of Tricats and actually enjoying myself. I had a lot of catching up to do with both training and getting to know some of the new people on the team since I missed the entire fall semester. I tried to stay as involved as I could and had an idea of what I had missed. People got really fast and I was going to have to work really hard to get fast enough for a shot at nationals.

Within an hour of my last final, the training began. I was able to average about 23 hours per week of slow and easy base training for the entire month of winter break. To kick off the new semester, the Tricats had an awesome winter training camp full of longm hard days of training and long, crazy nights of partying. I didn't realize how much I really missed the team until then. Basically, Tricats took priority in my life. I even told my boss that work was third on my list of priorities behind Tricats and school. Even school was in a distant second.

The semester started pretty slow. Senior design was still the same old crap and my classes were all pretty easy. I made it to at least 6 group practices a week and that, combined with pracitces on my own totaled about 20 hours per week. After the first set of time trial, I knew I had a lot of work to do. I really started to hammer on the training and achieved some big gains in performance. The competition for nationals was going to be really close and the Desert Classic Duathlon was going to be a big factor on the decision of who would go. The race went well besides a disappointingly slow bike leg and I beat the people that I thought I would need to beat to establish my place on the team in the performance arena. I followed this up with a solid performance at the final TT before the nationals team was selected. Applications were turned in, a week went by and I wasn't chosen to go. Neither were the two guys that I thought I was competing with for the 7th spot. Instead, someone we never expected to get chosen did.

That was that. My goal of making the nationals team was over. I didn't understand the decision since I was considered the 4th/5th fastest of the nationals applicants and had been on the team for a year before this. Oh well. Turns out I needed to be there the previous semester. I'll admit that I'm still bitter about how everything turned out but I just hope that the team does well at Nationals and has a great time. The plan was to go to Havasu and kick some ass and show the team what I can really do. I had been continuing to make huge gains at practices and was even able to beat Ward and Grabau on the bike at a practice or two. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I hurt my achilles tendon two weeks before the Duathlon and decided it was okay to keep training on it. Big mistake, but I'll get to that later. Spring break arrived and it was time to crush dreams at the Havasu race.

The race started great. I was much more comfortable in the open water and was hoping to set a 1500m PR by almost 20 minutes. I came out of the water about 4 minutes faster than I had expected and beat some people on the team that I should have been way behind. I was stoked. The adrenaline, caffeine and emotion fueled my body to push harder than I ever had before. I got on the bike and started hard and planned on going hard the whole way. At the first turnaround I got an idea of where I stood among our teammates and I was pretty happy with where I was. This motivated me even more. I spotted a few Tricats ahead of me and set my sights. I was coming for them. By the second turnaround, I had made up about 40 seconds of my deficit and still felt great and was stoked to be hitting the gauntlet. That's when my dream was crushed.

Long story short; a volunteer helped me to crash at about 25mph and resulted in a broken front skewer and fork. Race over. I tried to keep my head up, but I was devastated on the inside. From the way I felt and how things were going, I was looking at about a 2:12 which would have been good enough for somewhere around 9th in the collegiate competition and 2nd or 3rd among Tricats. Of course this is all speculation and who knows what might have happened on the run. The next week was spent recovering from the road rash and gnarly bruises and trying to repair my bike for the Tucson Triathlon. My previously mentioned achilles issue also started to act up really bad after the crash. I was an idiot and still raced at Tucson Tri and had my worst 5k in a long time and finished about 3.5 minutes slower than I should have. I could barely walk after the race and have been out of comission since. I finally wen to the doctor and have achilles and patellar tendonitis. Six weeks of physical therapy and no running. I can start swimming and riding again once the physical therapist gives me the green light. Hopefully this will be after Tuesday's PT session. I'm bringing my bike with just in case. I've been going crazy without it.

If there was ever a good time to get injured, this was it. School has been insanley busy. I've been putting in 6+ hour days in studio and that's just one class. Senior design just might kill me in the next month or so. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.

Sorry it was so long, but they'll be shorter from now on. Here are some pictures in case you didn't
want to read.

Training Camp Crew