Great way to come back

Imagine this:
you’re very successful on what you do and then you’re all over the place portrayed as a BIG CHEAT. It may be you are a singer with a syntethically modified voice. Or you’re just taking the credit from someone else. Or you’re using performance enhancing drugs, like some athletes do.

You pay your price, humiliation, unwanted attention, and everybody looses any respect they had for you. Some years later you come back, and in great form and after a period of re acclimatization you are back being a big shot. And you win a big race.

Lot of people will still call you cheat; many will not want to rate you as high as before, and overall there is a trust bridge that you know has broken.

 How would you cope with that? This guy won the Giro D’Italia for the second time, this time, though, he was clean of drugs.

It is certainly not likely that we, as amateur sportmen/women will experience it. But there are lessons there to be learned.

Lesson 1: I reckon that it takes a lot of guts to admit you were in the wrong and build that into a positive experience.

Lesson 2: You have to really believe in yourself to come back and succeed besides all the naysayers that may be around.

Lesson 3: you have to love your sport. That is the only explanation that I found for someone to do all of the above. It’s certainly not the money, and in many cases not the glory either, so I just take my hat to the new Giro champion.

Training wise I am a bit of a cheat, as I missed my swim for no excuse and I did feel guilty. But is all in the past now, I'm in the comfort of my home just about go to bed.

Date: 31 May
Sport: Running
Dist: 11km
Time: n/a
Comment: 4x7.5 min sets (2.2km) and some warm up. Suprised to heave my HR going up up up, but the legs are fine.

The weekend that was

Saturday:

Day off: I went to an argentinean celebration of our homeland 200 years

Sunday: big, great day out on the bike with my mate Martin. Managed to score 125km at a decent pace. I'm quite happy to see that I am getting stronger and stronger on the bike. The challenge will be to keep this strentgh during the winter months and make myself a different cyclist.

Date: 30 May

Sport: Cyclcing

Time: 255min

Dist: 123km

Comment: Gone west again. I'm liking this route more and more each time I cycle there.

Racing at 40's

I came accross this interview to Greg Bennet and how he intends to make the USA triathlon team for the next olympics, when he'll be 40 years old.

I thought it is amazing and inspiring in equal terms. And a show of how much your determination counts to be successful. Independently of the level you race at, it is always important to know what challenges lay ahead.
This guys is going to be training for a race that will happen in 3 years time; will undergo a lot of physicall pain and probably some setbacks, but he's ready for it. I admire that. And I draw from it for a race that will happen in little over 15 weeks in Hungary.
That was the triathlon highlight of the day for me. The rest was work work work, and some training. Another day off tomorrow so I'm ready for a rest.

Date: 28 May
Sport: Swim /// Run
Time: 60min /// 70min
Dist: 3.2km /// 16km
Comment: TGIF!

Cranking it up

We're now in week 7 of my training. Still doing base training, moderate to low intensity and as many long sessions as I can.
However, every week things change. May be 5 minutes more on the run, or another bike session, or a different speed workout on the monday, or running off the bike. I've also introduced 2x gym sessions starting this week.
I've never been a great fan of gyms, I don't have the mental toughness to be exercising indoor for over an hour and the couple of times I tried it didn't last long. When I started triathlons I thought I would never be in a gym again. I WAS WRONG, the word of mouth first, the blogs later and obviously my coach, tought me of the benefits of core strength and conditioning during base training.
I didn't believe it at first, but after a couple of months I realized they were right, my back and core muscles were always letting me down on the hard races and with time and patience I've won a few battles.

The way it works for me is a 1hr tops session that includes core, strentgh and stretching of different muscle groups and a final 15 min in my new toy (not mine, though, the gym's) the rowing machine.

I never tried one before, but I can tell that is a very cool thing to do.

Going to the gym adds to the constant juggling of my spare time allocation, but I am sure it will be OK.

Date: 27 May

Sport: Cycling /// Gym?

Time: 100min /// 60min

Dist: 52km /// n/a
Comment: looking forward to the weekend!

Endurance dog

Continuing with my weatherman reports I am not very happy to announce that winter is looking very wintry in Auckland. Although we are luckier thatn many other guyst in NZ that have been battered by the weather gods.
So, I had to endure a bit of the bad weather in order to tick the box on my workouts for the week. Wednesday is long run and I had planned to go a new route. I went out later than usual after a power nap with Nat (15 minutes for me, dunno for her) to wait for the rain to ease.

3km into the run I get this walker and her dog on a narrow part of the footpath, I slowed down and continued doing my thing. I realized after some time that the dog was following me, and we got to a part of the road where you have to change footpaths due to some roadworks I crossed and took the dog with me as the owner was not on sight. We waited for some time and the girl told me that it was not her dog, that it had followed her all the way along for some time.
I wasn't carrying my phone, so I discounted calling the animal control services. There were 15km of running still to go, and the girl carried on walking leaving me not many options. I decided not to go back, but to shorten my workout to 10 more km and call from home. I kept running at a comfy 4.30 pace and was escorted by this big brown beast who was keeping the pace quite well. I named him endurance dog.
There's a bit of ondulation on the final 5km and I made sure endurance dog got hydrated and we hit the hills to get back home.
Nat was happily surprised to see me arrive with my new friend and after a call and 30 minutes wait we got someone to pick endurance dog and take him back to the owners, 5km down the road from my place.

The funny thing is that this guy is pretty well known among the animal control people, as he has escaped so many times. I was the 5th person to report him today, and it had already been and broken out of someone else's home.

Date: 26 May
Sport: Swim /// Run
Time: 60min /// 65min
Dist: 3.3km /// 14km
Comment: I think I found a new running partner.

200 years

Today it was my country's aniversary and I wished I was there for the celebrations. It's a strange tie, the one that still makes me be with one foot in one island and the other in the pampas. Over the years it has been a constant to read the news from both places, follow the fubol league and triathlon races when I'm here. And to check the rugby, the tri races coverage when I am there. I'm not sure I would have got into triathlon if I stayed there, so I'm happy I ended up in NZ, but always mindful of setting a "kiwi tri squad" once I am back home for good.
I did one race close to my home town in 2008, my third triathlon. It was a local race and the best of the region were suppossed to be there. The main aim to do the race was to show mum and dad what it is that got me hooked while in NZ and get them to experience one race first hand. I'm from a lil' farming town where the only elevation is the cow pies. And we don't do a lot of road riding, so it was me on a borrowed MTB doing a "rural triathlon"   (that's how we call them).
The swim was five laps of 100m on a 50m pool, then 20km on the flat dirt roads and a 5k bolt. My parents were quite happy to see me among the top 5 out of the water, and a bit worried that I didn't come as fast on the bike, but happy to see me finish top 10 overall.

I chatted with a few guys and I got a bit of a tease for being an international athlete (ha ha ha), it was good fun. I'm looking forward to race there again, and hopefully do better.

the weather bomb is here, so training is being confined to interior spaces,
Date: 25 May
Sport: cycle /// gym
Time: 45min /// 45min
Dist: n/a /// n/a
Comment: viva la revolucion!

sore downunder

This is the topic I did not wanted to raise. The unspoken subject.
It's been a week now and I'm still sore "down there" from my last long ride. It's been a problem since the start of the season and it's come and gone on a steady weekly pattern, but I am now at a stage that don't want to take it any more.
During my first seasons I used nothing, and until my first half ironman race I never had any issues. But after that I've always had problems coming at intervals. The thing is that I don't think I need to take it any more. So I'm going to start exploring whatever options are available to prevent saddle sores in the future.

So far I've been using vaseline, but it appears that it hasn't done any good. So the next step is to go for chamois cream. I'm going to the bike shop tomorrow morning to get whatever is available and start the testing process.

Monday is going to be the new easy day at the pool due to longer more epic weekends coming soon, so today we started with a fun dips session. I though it was going to be "bread and dips" but it was just the good old dips that make your shoulder muscles ache, 10 sessions of 10 reps after each of the 10 100m that the warm up took.

The evening was rainy, so another easy session at run.

All in all, an easy day.

I like base training, it's always time for nice surprises like today's.

Date: 24 May

Sport: Swim /// Run

Time: 50min /// 50min
Dist: 2.2km /// 9km
Comment: It feels like tapper week, but it's not.