2011 South West Challenge Series standings & points

I've competed in the South West challenge series every year since 2006. I love the series. It's an amazing challenge that an athlete has to work hard at and be dedicated to for an entire season. Since 2006 this will be the 1st year I wasn't able to compete at least 11 of the races in the SW series.

This year has been an amazing season! 2 incredibly fast athletes, Marty Moriarty and Brooks Vandivort started beating me early in the season which is unusual. I usually train hard on the indoor trainer throughout the winter and have my best races early when the other triathletes are just starting to build their base cycling fitness.

Cory Adair is currently in 4th place in the series. Cory is a solid and consistent athlete who is always in contention for the top 3 in the SW series. He has 8 races & 39.25 points. If he finishes in 1st place in the 35-39 AG the next 2 races he'll have a season total of 55.25 points which as of right now would place him in 3rd place.

Marty Moriarty who is a pure cyclist & bike time trial phenom is in 3rd place in the South West. He has 6 races and 53 points. If he finishes the Elephant man triathlon in 4th place or better he'll jump ahead of me & secure 2nd place in the series. There are only 2 SW Challenge series races left for the year. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to hold onto 2nd place!

I'm currently in 2nd place having completed 9 races and have 56.25 points. If I hadn't been injured from a cycling crash I'd be competing in as many late season SW series races as possible to attempt to hold onto 2nd place.

Brooks Vandivort has absolute control of 1st place in the 35-39 SW series age group. He has completed 8 races and has 76 points! Brooks is in his 1st full season of triathlon training and racing but has already proven he's one of the fastest athletes in the entire region. He has the perfect combination of natural talent, dedication, and grit which allowed him put on more speed in less than a year than any other triathlete I've ever seen!

The 2 remaining races for the series is the Elephantman this weekend & the Raptor triathlon on Columbus weekend. I wont know until then if my 56.25 points will be enough to keep me in the top 3 of the South West challenge series this year. I'll let you know if there are any changes in the 35-39 AG.

Thanks for tuning in and please keep me in your prayers for quick healing from my injuries.

post race/ post taper

The day after Oak Flats Road Race I was crazy sore! I hadn't been that sore since I completed my 1st Half Iron in 2005. The race helped me realize that the weak point of my bodies fitness is my glutes & lower back. I've read that is a common issue with triathletes. My glutes had muscle failure so badly they gave out on the last 12 mile loop. They fatigued so badly that when I stood to sprint my legs colapsed & almost crashed. Yesterday I started a strength training regimen that targets the glutes & lower back.

I'm so glad I tapered for this race. Not only did I do better at Oak Flats RR since I tapered, but I was really excited to start training again.

My next race is the Elephantman half Iron Sept 25th! The Elephantman will be my tune up race for Ironman Arizona.

a more traditional aproach to triathlon training

I apoligize for not posting more triathlon related material lately, my oldest son Cody has started wrestling and is practicing 4 days a week and is dancing 1 day a week. My daughter is also doing dance. With all the new activities my babies are now doing I was struggling to find time to blog. By the way, I've started a blog about my son wrestling, it's http://juniorwrestler.blogspot.com/ I've mostly posted videos and pictures so far. I'm sure proud of him. He's doing AMAZING for being only 3 years old. Check it out.

The last couple months of training has been going great. I've been concentrating on building my base fitness and dropping my off season weight since January. So far I've dropped 29 pounds & only have 20 pounds more to lose to be at my ultimate race weight of 185! So far this year anytime I felt tired or unmotivated I took the day off of training. This is an approach I've never attempted before. I'd always been told I should have an off season, then a season of slowly building endurance and base fitness, then have some hard training at the end of the year. I knew this was the way triathlon training was supposed to be done, but I never did it. My approach has always been to train hard all season long. My approach to training never worked out for a long productive season. I'd start off training really hard in the early winter when everyone else was ramping down their training. I would log at least 550 bike miles and 100 run miles a month with lots of speed work all winter long. Every year without fail I'd be really fast until the summer, then I'd start to feel ran down and fatigued. I never allowed myself rest and recovery, much less an off season so when I felt ran down I'd chalk it up to weakness and force myself to train even harder. Eventually my body couldn't handle the amount & intensity of my training anymore so I'd get burned out and I'd stop training, start eating more, I'd gain back all the weight I'd lost, and I'd end up having a poor performance at my years end my A race.

Every year that was what I did. This year I'm learning from my mistakes & breaking the pattern. This year I'm starting off easy, ramping up my training slowly. I'm feeling confident in my new training methods & am hoping this more traditional approach to training will help me achieve my seasons ultimate goal of a sub 13 hour Ironman in November, and succeed at my 2nd most important goal of beating my best friend Jimmy at my tune up race, The Elephantman half Iron in September.

The first Half Iron triathlon in New Mexico!

The 2011 South West Challenge Series schedule is now out! They said there will probably be some small changes to the schedule, but it's finally out! It's at:

http://www.southwestchallengeseries.com/

I noticed one of the newest races in the South West Challenge series is the Elephant Man Half Iron in September at Elephant Butte New Mexico. I'm very excited about this! It's the first half Iron in New Mexico. The Ironman training program I'm doing has me scheduled to do a Half Iron the weekend of September 25th, & the Elephant Man half Iron is that weekend!!! I'm VERY excited, I'm going to do it! I'll be competing in the first half iron in New Mexico! The Elephant Man Half is a really hard course, it's imperative I get back down to 185 pounds by then. Did I say this already, I'm very excited!

Another race I think is absolutely amazing is the Turquoise trail duathlon. I wont be doing it this year because of IMAZ, but I've been talking about putting together a Heart break hill duathlon using the same course for a year and a half. I wonder if they got the idea from me? I posted the link to my old post at the bottom of this post to show I'm not full of it. Just click on RD'ing a duathlon for proof.