Why a Koi?
The Japanese associate the Koi with perseverance in adversity, strength of purpose, determination to overcome obstacles and the ability to attain high goals. When my husband Mark suggested that we use the Koi on the header for my website, I thought that it perfectly symbolizes my past struggles in Hawaii and my recent assault on this elusive race. Instead of letting last year’s complete and utter disappointment defeat me, I have used it as a motivator to hopefully achieve a personal best race. While anything can happen on race day, the process has been extremely rewarding and that is what keeps me going on a daily basis. The things I have learned through this training block have made me a stronger athlete and will help me as I coach others to their goals.
I have embraced the changes in my training plan and followed the schedules carefully. The training block from July through August was the hardest I have ever gone through. My schedules were dominated by a strong focus on power training on the bike and a lot of faster paced runs. And, for the first time ever as a triathlete, I logged all of my training (meaning that there was no cheating on the workouts!). I raced twice here in Boulder with great success. The first was the Boulder Peak triathlon, which I have already written about, and the second was the 5430 Long Course race. Much like the Boulder Peak race, I went into the 5430 Long Course off of a very hard week of training. Although my legs felt heavy on race day, I was able to stick to my pre-race plan and raced to second place with a time that was 8 minutes faster than last year.
I immediately went back into training with a week of rest in the beginning of September as my carrot. The workouts were grueling and many of them, when I looked them over weeks beforehand, seemed unachievable. Having the mini-goals of these workouts kept the training interesting and exciting. After seven solid weeks of training, it is amazing how you can go from feeling invincible to feeling like you cannot run or bike or swim another mile. I woke up one morning and knew that it was time to rest (I believe the tears from exhaustion were the first clue). I conferred with Terry and Dr. Phil and we had to make some modifications to the training plan starting the easy week a little earlier. Unfortunately, this messed up the timing of my taper for the LA triathlon as we added in some harder workouts in the days prior to the race. This race has been off my schedule for many years, mainly due to the non-wetsuit swim for the pros. I get cold in a 78 degree pool on a 100 degree day, so 68 degree water at 6:45 am is my nemesis. It was very evident on race day! The combination of the cold water and fatigued legs left me feeling horrible on the bike and run. It was a grind and not a very good performance! On a more positive note, my sister placed third in her age group in her first triathlon in more than 2 years. She killed them in the swim, coming out of the water with a 7 minute lead. In fact, her time was so fast people thought she went off in the wrong wave. To them I say, she is a Zeiger, she kicks ass in the water!
I am now in taper mode, which is exciting and scary. As triathletes, we constantly worry about losing fitness and rest always seems to be the enemy. The exciting part is that tapering means that the race is near, and the time to see the dividends of all the hard work is around the corner.
Good luck to everyone racing in Kona!
Race hard, have fun.
