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 :) .