Hey all! I’ve been
sorta quiet here lately. This is mostly
because I’ve been facing some adversity in my racing and health, but I’ve
received some recent information on one of those items so I thought now would
be a good time for an update for the few of you who may be interested.
First the racing…
I raced a couple Continental Cup races in La Paz and
Monterrey Mexico earlier this year which I wouldn’t really describe as
successful races, but rather good learning experiences. The main issue with both races was my
swim. It wasn’t a problem of being out
of swimming shape, but more due to the fact that I was super duper rusty with
respect to pack swimming in the open water.
At that time I was swimming well in the comforts of the pool, but I was
not ready for the mayhem of a mass start open water race. At La Paz I got beat up pretty bad at the
first turn buoy and ended up dropping off the main pack. I rode with another American athlete during
the spread out bike leg and finished with a fairly decent run split. This put
me 14th in a relatively small field.
About a month later I unwittingly joined a fairly fast field to race in
Monterrey. The swim was the same story as
La Paz except worse. I again found
myself in some big time turbulence during the swim which sucked away my energy
and caused me to lose the pack shortly after the 300m turnaround. At La Paz I still had people around me when I
entered T1 but this time I was alone.
Most people would have called it a day, but I figured that since I had travelled
all the way down to Mexico, I was going to make the trip worthwhile and finish
the thing. I ended up grinding out the 40K
bike alone and then ran with the little I had left to finish before they started
tearing down the finish chute. I didn’t finish last, but close. Following these ITU races my plan was to do
some local non-draft races and then give the ITU stuff another try in Magog,
Canada at the end of July. But, I haven’t
raced since.
This leads me to my health…
Going into my race in Monterrey my left quad had been
bothering me slightly. I went ahead and
raced and the following day my quad was screaming at me. I took some time off to let it heal but the
issues never completely went away. When
I tried to get back into high intensity training things just got worse. During this time I pulled out of a couple
planned races (Vineman Monte Rio & San Diego International Triathlon)
thinking that I just needed more time, but I soon realized it wasn’t just time
that I needed. So, I ended up going to
the doctor, got an MRI, and got the results last Friday. In the left hip area I’ve got some psoas
tendinitis / inflammation going on and on the right side there’s a small labral
tear. I haven’t really had any pain in
the right side, go figure! So, what this
means is that I have some PT ahead of me and need to build back the running
slowly so I don’t bring back the symptoms.
I’m a little bummed because I was on track to fix the issues I had with
my earlier races and am confident I would have had a successful race in Magog
if I was healthy. But, I guess that’s
the way things go. With my near term triathlon
racing plans uncertain I’m going to keep on with ocean racing and build back my
health to see if I can get back on track for some late season racing. I’ll try to come back here more often to
status how things are going!
They must have had an intern making the bike rack labels in La Paz
Our race in La Paz was mid-afternoon, so the age group race after us finished at night with a finish-line rave
Junior Men racing in Monterrey the day before my race
Junior Men in Monterrey
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