Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Tell All Tuesday

Now I’m back and settled in Texas I’m going to make a good effort at getting back to consistently writing posts. So back to tell all Tuesday. This will be posts of a 70.3 champions training days in a bid to regain form in 2012.

SWIM:
Was a crazy swim this morning with lighting and thunder still going strong at 0530am. It took my a while to get in the pool as I was feeling rather our tired. Our dog was pretty frightened last night and jumped on the bed. Normal this is a no in our house hold but we made an exception. She was all over the place and Lindsay and I had very little shut eye.

WARM UP:
400 Swim, 300 Pull, 200, 100

MAIN SET:
4x200 IM
100 kick
4x200 Pull with buoy and band
100 EZ
4x200kick
Since I missed a fair amount of warm up I went 400 pull, 3x100 IM on 1:30, 200IM as 25IM/25FR, 200 Cool down. 

BIKE: Computrainer
WARM UP:
20 min easy build to Z3

MAIN SET:
4x20 min each building to upper Z3/RP efforts with 2 min easy between

RUN:
30 min easy stroll around the neighborhood finishing with 4x 30seconds fast.
Did the run in some of my new shoes that arrived in my little shipment. Now, just FYI I’m sponsored by K-Swiss. I have really enjoyed running in there shoes over the years and they have stepped up another level with the Blade-Max Stable!
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This shoe blew me away! I will be doing gear review in the coming days on the Blade-Max Stable and the Polar RCX5 heart rate monitor which is the bomb!
Polar too have stepped it up. I use to wear the watches back in 2000-2005. The watches are back to thin and sleek. Very good looking watches again with the RCX5 series.

polarwatch
Pics of my run today in the hills.
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Till next time...which will be sooner.

-Cotter

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Saddle up

It gets very tough to keep writing a blog on how yet another race did not go as planned! This has been my story for the past year or so now. Instead of dwelling on the race I’m going to go over the positives and why I’m keeping on going.
The trip to New Zealand was a big venture for Lindsay and I. Leaving home and our core group of people we work with was going to be a risk, but a risk we were very keen to take on. I wanted to see if I could put in the training required for Ironman and have my then buggered up knee able to handle the load. Lindsay, she just needed some good old R&R for personal reasons.

Positives:
  • Training went perfect! No pain after bigger run volume and more run frequency.
  • Established a huge aerobic pace that will serve me well for the year.
  • Swam with one of the best swim coaches I have every had. Coach Roly Crichton. My lane mates Dylan McNeise, Tom Davidson, and Julia Grant were awesome.
  • Fantastic training grounds in Christchurch.
  • Catching up family and friends.
  • Driving a sweet beat up Honda Civic.

  • Reon Nolan
  • Getting to meet and talk with legendary triathlete, Scot Molina.
  • Know I don’t have to retire because of my knee.
  • Even though the IM was cancelled, probably a small blessing for knee and not having to recover for 2 weeks.
  • Getting the Polar RCX5. The RCX5 is the bomb.

  • Riding Gorges and Old West Coast at least twice a week .
  • All my data suggests I’m in fantastic shape.
  • I’m swimming well.
  • If it was an Ironman I would have gotten top 3. HAHA I’m allowed to say this because the race never happened.
  • Lindsay and I are both in a good place.

Thanks to K-Swiss, Quintana Roo, Profile Design, Base Performance, LeadDog, Polar, and Em’s Power Cookies for all you help and support during my time in New Zealand. Even though it wasn’t what I was hoping for, I’m very motivated and fired up for 2012.

RACE REPORT
Very cold morning race morning with a good amount of chop on the lake. Went to water 15 min before start and did the normal warm up before heading to start line.


I always get so nervous in the water because you just don’t know how violent/fast the start is going to be while trying to set up for a top spot in the first 200-400 meters. I decided to go a little further left of the main pack and was with Marko Albert and Terenzo Bozzone. The gun went off and so did we! The pace was on and Marko was off and put in a little gap between T and I. I decided to go for it and bridged up to Marko with T on my feet. The main pack merged with us and somebody cut into T’s spot behind my feet. 200m later I looked back and Marko and I had a gap. It really opened up. They guy who cut in front of T lost my feet and allowed the gap to open. I was feeling fantastic, but then I lost focus because of the chopper that kept hovering over Marko and I. I have maybe 10 off strokes and Marko had the gap. I was dissapointed but didn’t panic. I swam my own race and the main chase didn’t make up anytime on me. At this point in the race the confidence was sky high. Second out of the water in Quintana Roo Superfull wetsuit (more people need to be in this suit. Amazing).
My race report comes to halt after 5km on the bike. The legs did not show up at all. I was not able to hang during the climb up Highway 5.

But hey, at least the run felt easy on the knee.

The End