(first triathlon and Ironman in 1996)
Once the GFNY month - by our predecessors often referred to as "May" - is behind me, I will be in Ticino, Italy and France during the months of June and July. There, cycling will be inevitable. But unlike the last four years, I will continue to run regularly which means every day I am not bike racing. In the past four years I would try to get one 10k jog per week in which I sometimes did, sometimes didn't. This year I didn't even try and just stopped running entirely from Boston Marathon to September. I hope to get a few races in, wherever I will be. Whether it's the Capriasca 5000m track meet or a mountain run, anything will do.
August I will be back in NYC and try to hit as many track and road CPTC workouts as possible. Plus, I will continue to race whatever comes along.
If you are reading this, you are probably interested in my training (if not, read this instead). I won't provide a training log or a detailed account of every run because I don't think it's helpful, let alone interesting. Please keep in mind that everything is relative and everyone is different. This is my athletic background, which puts my racing and training into perspective:
Age 17-20 bike racer maxing out at 20.000k per year
Age 21-29 Triathlete with focus on Ironman, training up to 1.000 hours per year, Ironman PB 8:59h
Age 30-35 Runner with focus on Marathon, PB coming down from 2:39 (Dusseldorf 2005) to 2:33 (NYC 2009)
Age 35-39 racing granfondos during spring/summer (about 7000k per year) and running fall/winter (about 2000k per year)
While I did race in the pro category in Ironman for two years, I was always an amateur either working or studying. Ironman suited me quite well. I lacked talent and the ability to win a peloton sprint to be a successful bike racer. Upgrade races usually ended in a mass sprint that rarely someone escaped. And if so, it was the guys who went on to pro careers. And at 6'2, 165lbs I'm too big and tall to be a good runner. But I was a decent swimmer, a passista and able to endure an Ironman marathon. Jack of many trades, master of none.
I had a training log where I wrote down hours and type of training since I was 17. While I rode naked (no computer) since I'm 20, I have been running with a watch until a few years ago. Nowadays I rarely wear one when I run. And after Boston this year I quit writing the log. I felt like I had stopped training a couple years earlier in favor of exercising so the log was no longer useful. I used to go back to old logs to learn from mistakes I made, to make sure I changed things and to remember what it took to get to a certain level.
But I do occasionally still take a peek at the CNN clock at Columbus Circle before and after my run.
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