2011 Racing schedule

These are the major races I will be racing in 2011. Along with these races you will still see me at many of the local events in Washington :).

Wildflower (Long Course)

April 29th, 2011

Ironman Boise 70.3

June 11th, 2011

Rev3 Portland (half Iron)

July 10th, 2011

Lake stevens 70.3

August 14th, 2011

One more 70.3 event in September still to be determined

Winter Training

Its January now, and the more I think about it, the more I realize the tri season will be here before you know it! The thought of this makes me pretty excited. Most people already know this by now, but I have decided to race professionally in 2011. I am actually pretty thrilled to hopefully take my racing to a new level in 2011. Life hands us opportunities (you will never straight up get what you want, you will only get opportunities), and this is one opportunity I want to take. I have everything I need to be successful and achieve my goals in triathlon. It strictly just comes down to hard work. If I work hard, focus, and am dedicated I will most likely achieve the goals I have set in 2011. If I get lazy and lack consistency the failure falls back on me, and the opportunity I have been given will be thrown away. Excuses get you no where, and I have none. Something I realized in 2010 was that in order for me to be successful and achieve the goals I set out, I needed to train for adversity. If reaching my goals meant that I needed to hope for a perfect race, I might as well have flipped a coin, because the chances of things coming together perfectly on race day are quite slim. The thought continually ringing in my head last year was that I need to focus my training so that even on a mediocre day I can still achieve my goals. This meant a lot of hard Winter training. This is an idea that I want to carry with me now for 2011. Yes 2011 has already had some bumps, but that is just apart of life. Overall I think I will be more than ready to improve on my results of 2010. I am just hoping we can start to get rid of some of this snow :).

Spokane has had more snow than usual this winter, and I actually think this has helped me as an athlete. I find that forced off seasons can actually be refreshing for me. If I lived in place such as Arizona, San Diego, or some place warm I would be hitting the training hard year round, and never taking a break. Yes I do still train year round, but the volume on the bike and run is decreased come winter. In the summer sometimes I get sick of the trails by my house, but now after running on the same icy snowy stretch of road day after day, I have a refreshed appreciation for these trails. Come fall I sometimes get a little sick of spending long hours on my bike out on the roads, but after a winter of trainer riding my excitement to ride on the roads has skyrocketed. Although these conditions aren't ideal for training, they are ideal for refreshing my appreciation of what I do have in the PNW come spring and summer. I will hopefully post a race schedule on my blog soon, and give some more specific updates on how my training is going. Monday I start practice with a local high school swim team, so there should be some good posts about me getting killed by kids way younger than me. I guess it is an opportunity to get faster, or drown :) .