Back to the Pat...

Well I've signed up for the 2012 Patriot Half Iron in Freetown, MA on June 16. This will be the first time I've competed there since 2009, which was probably one of the best years for me competitively. While I was going through it 09 seemed to be an off year but looking at it in hindsight, it was the last year I sort of had some stability in training, work schedule, and life in general. Now things have started to calm down again, and while last year was a little over ambitious and I am trying to focus on getting myself back into hard core competition, and every year that I've done the Patriot good things have usually followed.
This year will be different than when I enter the Pat in 08 and 09. In those years buoyed by strong results in the previous year's tris I went into the Elite/ Open division to try to compete for a check...and promptly got smoked on the bike. 2008 actually went well I carried the #1 bib and set the day's fastest swim split. In 2009 I had a gearing miscue on the bike so I sort of fell out of contention pretty early indeed Speedy Claire was able to cross beating Bobby off her bucket list ( although I asterisk this as she was only doing the aquabike and didn't have to hold me off on the run.) granted I did throw down a pretty nasty run split, which would have put me higher up overall if I threw down my typical 2:45 bike split instead of a 3:00. This year I entered as an age grouper only because the competition has gotten exponentially harder, Karim from the Waterbury Y tri club won the 25-29 AG last year throwing down a 4:35 the best I did here was 4:55 with a short swim and speedy run in 2009. So my goal is to go under 4:45 and hopefully show myself as a serious competitor instead of a survivor like I was last year at Providence and Louisville.So the game plan for Patriot this year is to work the bike and the run. I'll still swim 3x a week but since I know I'll be able to do a sub 30 swim split pretty easily I won't have to throw doen the 5200yard death workouts I did for Ironman. 3000-4000 yards per workout should be plenty, granted they should be a quality 3-4k. My running is coming along and I'm hoping the Newtons will add some ammo to the tool kit. The bike is where I need to put my work but it's hard. Most coaches state that you need to do at least 100 miles a week to show improvement and at last check I still have a 9-5er, rent to pay, a relationship to maintain, so going out for 3x50 milers a week maybe out of the cards especially if i want to keep a job, keep the girlfriend and keep a roof over my head. So I may have to resort to the trainer and Good ol' coach Troy and Chris Carmichael shouting at me to get out of the saddle and try to unleash my inner Lance. So 2012 is starting to shape up after the Waterbury Y tri club kickoff and raffle on Feb 21 I'll have a better idea of what my season will look like.

RD