2012: Looking Ahead

Triathlon

As of right now, I have three races that I have signed up for.  I registered for Timberman (Grand Rapids, MN) and Northwoods (Nevis, MN) as soon as possible as they tend to fill early.  I also signed up for the new Superior Man Tri to take advantage of the early bird discount.

I will be trying to focus my training to have a solid race at Superior Man in late August.  I should be able to throw down a hard effort at Timberman also as it is in mid July, but Northwoods will be more of a fast training effort as it will be two weeks prior to Superior Man.

The rest of the race season will be made up of races as they fit into my schedule.  I will find a few that sound like fun, like the Moose Lake Tri and Burrito Union.  I will try to work on my biking this year.  I would like to put a few more miles in this season so I can put down a good bike split at Superior Man without killing my ability to run well also.

Running

I have my slot for the Garry Bjorklund already, and will try to get into the TC 10 Miler also.  I will most likely run the Park Point 5 miler, and as many of the NMTC Spring and Fall races as possible.  I am even looking at running in the spring trail 25k race.

I am trying to put a solid early effort at building my running base again.  I am following a similar progression to what I did last year as I had a season worth of PR's at almost every distance I ran.  On top of the progression of runs I will be focusing on running the majority of my early season miles easy with only one run a week having any speed at all.

2011 Wrap-Up

Swim - 31650 yards
Bike - 1502 miles
Run - 1055 miles

Those are the totals good or bad...  Pleased with my overall run mileage.  I made a concerted effort to start the year with a good run focus.  I kept this up for a good portion of the year.  Really happy about that.  During the summer I got out on the bike a good amount.  But I know if I could find a little more time for the bike I could make some improvements there.  And the swim...  It is no secret I do not like the pool at all.  So I tend to avoid swimming outside of race day.  I might need to try to hit the pool a little more this offseason to see if it helps much.

Overall I had a decent season for racing.  I had multiple PR's running: 5 mile, 10 mile, and half marathon.  And all were big improvements over previous PR's.  For my tri season, I had a lot of fun and raced well.  No new PR's, but I had some very good races that I enjoyed.

Now it is time to look forward to 2012.  I have already signed up for the new Superior Man Tri half iron distance at the end of August.  I will also be racing in Grand Rapids at the Timberman Triathlon in mid-July.  My first big race of the season is the Garry Bjorklund half marathon in June.  I am still putting together the remainder of the season, but I have a couple of big races to train for at least.

Let me know if there are any really cool/unique/fun races out there that I should take a look at while I finalize my race season.