I’m starting to race early this year at the Pan American Championship in La Paz, Argentina on January 15th. This is a race I always wanted to do but could never justify – with the most ridiculous travel for any triathlon EVER and also the race date in mid January it just never made sense. Now that I am being forced to go in order to solidify my start at Olympic Trials in May I’m happy to make the trip. Speaking of the Olympics, the men’s team is wide open. It’s ON!! With eight weeks of solid training in the Florida heat under my belt I AM ready to go for La Paz! No negative affirmations here.

May 2012 be full of happiness and free of attack websites!

2012 – another year with PAULO at the helm. Thanks to Lauren Harrison for the pic.

I was nowhere near race-ready, but I was newly race-able, so I went out and “knocked the rust off,” missing the front pack in the swim and riding a more-or-less solo 40K in between a large front pack and a similarly large third pack (I caught my friend John Dahlz and a Canadian kid named Aaron Thomas in the final 10K on the bike, giving me a bit of rest). I topped it all off with a 35:22 10K. It was a tough day for sure as I was going flat-out pretty much the whole race and didn’t have much to show for it at the end of the day.

Three weeks in St. George, Utah with Paulo Sousa’s Triathlon Squad brought me to the start line in San Francisco. After arriving at the camp Paulo nonchalantly made the claim that “the problem is in your calves and achilles, not your foot,” and then something like “I hope you like water-running (sinister laugh),” and then made me bring my “Stick” to every run session for post-run self-treatment. Two weeks later I logged a 76k run week.

Getting into the car three weeks prior to make the drive to St. George I remember thinking, “Am I really doing this?” Gut check time, Dupree! I was hesitant to leave the comfort of my new home in Boulder, a place I called home for only three weeks before taking off to camp, but also the best place for training I ever encountered – especially for cycling. However, for those three weeks I was just doing my own thing and I know that self-coaching is a recipe for major athlete disaster. And despite being back to a little run training I couldn’t seem to shake the plantar fasciitis completely. So I took off to see what the Triathlon Squad is all about.

Rewind three more weeks – I just arrived in Boulder and fired my coach that I moved to Boulder to work with. Yeah, that makes sense! During my road trip from Orlando to Boulder I saw quite a few Paulo Sousa coached athletes – namely Andrew Hodges and Amanda Felder – and the suspicions I already held about the efficacy of a run-specific coach as a triathlon coach grew until I finally cracked and started the process of change. It was only 18 months ago that a friend of mine made the same decision, changing to a squad-based coach known for hard work and results, and halfway through camp we all sat around the computer and watched Sarah Groff get on the podium in Kitzbuhel! So I’m confident in my decision for sure.

There are no races on my schedule – just getting the work done, carrying water, chopping wood and all that!

The Triathlon Squad at Sand Hollow State Park. The water is 22C so I don’t get a wetsuit (ITU rules)!

I would be in Mexico for the Monterrey World Cup right now but instead I’m sitting here eating breakfast at Panera. I’m definitely bummed about missing this opportunity to race another World Cup but Mexico is currently number one on “Kevin’s list of least favorite places to race” so I’m not that bummed. Good luck to everyone racing (especially Mark Fretta who took my start spot). May the host hotel not get raided by masked gunmen this year!

The swim start in Monterrey last year. Not scoring Olympic points this weekend sucks, but not having to go to Mexico is awesome!

Anyways, the race took place in Lake Louisa State Park. It was a sprint distance Pan American Cup with ITU ranking points on the line so it attracted quite a talented field from all over the world. I do almost all of my cycling workouts inside the park so I definitely knew the course quite well. Lake Louisa itself is so shallow that the swim was a non-factor – I probably only swam 300 meters total, spending the rest of the time either running or dolphin diving. A huge front pack formed up halfway through the first of four laps on the bike and this was how we entered T2. I came out of T2 right in the middle of the field and immediately ran straight to the front of the race. My run fitness seemed to be quite good entering the race so my confidence was high but after about four minutes of running right behind the leaders I blew up fantastically. I faded hard to 16th. This was not at all the result I thought myself capable of. Hopefully I can make up for it in Mooloolaba!

Here is a video of the finish starting with the third place finisher Kaleb Van Ort:

After the race USAT hosted a cycling skills camp. This is exactly what I needed. We Americans are not known for our bike handling skills (with the exception of a few skilled athletes). Let’s just say that it would take more than my fingers and toes to count the number of times American World Championship Series ‘regulars’ hit the pavement last year in races, and I contributed one to that number! Michael Heitz was our instructor and he was awesome!

The highlight of the weekend was a spirited game of three-on-three ‘trashball,’ a game played on a grass field where the objective is to pick up a small foam ball and score it into a trash can, all while riding bikes. Additional rules state that all three members of the team must possess the ball before scoring, and no single rider can possess the ball for more than three seconds. It turns out that Greg Billington is pretty much the Lebron James of trashball (Sidney Crosby for my Canadian readers). I specialized in defense and definitely stacked pretty hard a couple of times to prevent others from scoring. Thankfully I didn’t break my bike (or myself) so it’s all good.

A text from coach reads: “Arms are too long and feet too inactive.”

Felt pretty active at the time!

More of them tomorrow!

The beard is gone.

I started growing the beard on the first day of training for 2011, so I started calling it “the fitness beard.” Training is going really well down here in Florida – the beard has almost 11 weeks of fitness in it! Unfortunately for the beard one weekend spent in Gainesville with old college friends earned it less desirable nicknames.

The beard week 11: in terms of masculinity does the fact that I have a beard make up for taking a small white dog for a walk?

The beard made sense in Colorado – it kept me warm on the bike. Now that I’m in Florida it just hinders the application of sunscreen. A more important development is that no fewer than three girls say that with the beard I look like Ryan Gossling from the movie “The Notebook.” I’ve never seen the movie but apparently this is a good thing! Their boyfriends/husbands said I look like Abe Lincoln. I guess I would be OK with either.

The beard week five: Sarah Haskins had to get a picture with Ryan Gossling at Brian Fleischmann’s wedding reception.

The beard is apparently a topic of dinner conversation at the OTC even after my departure. A text from Sarah Groff the other day read “has Kevin shaved?” Nope, not yet! Also, Ethan Brown is destroying me in the pool right now, but I have this beard so that’s OK, right?

My beard is not nearly as cool as Sam Beam’s beard (AKA Iron and Wine). The new album accompanies me back and forth from Clermont several times a week.

To be completely honest the beard is really annoying – it has to go sometime soon!

The first leg of the trip was a long drive from Colorado Springs to Fort Worth, TX to visit Barrett Brandon. I left the training center feeling good and in high spirits, but arrived feeling quite the opposite of that. The rest of the week was downhill from there with most training sessions being replaced by naps and my normally scheduled naps being replaced by longer naps. Friday I finally started to feel better, made my way down to Austin, TX, and got in some easy swim/bike/run days to get back into things. On a side note: Austin, TX is awesome. After that a short drive to Houston followed by a long drive the next day to Florida finished things up. Another side note: Houston, TX is not awesome.

I can already tell that coming to Florida for the winter was a good decision. Today is about as cold as it gets here (in the 30s F) and the Coloradoan in me said it was warm out! Training will feature quite a bit of volume and intensity over the next few months and I’m looking forward to all of it!

That’s right – 600 days until London! That’s still a long way off, though…maybe it seems closer because the first US Olympic selection race is less than eight months away. I certainly have a lot of work to do if I plan to get a top nine finish in London next August, but all I can do is work hard and hopefully I’ll get there. I’m also hoping this wonderful Fall weather holds up in Colorado Springs until I leave for warmer climes in January!

So how goes the training in the lead up to Clearwater? I would describe it as ‘excellent!’ Over the past three weeks I logged normal swim volume, a few more hours on the bike than normal, and a lot more hours running than normal. This is the main reason for my lack of blogging – really good training blocks are often the most boring and uneventful time in the life of an athlete. I just ticked training session after training session off the schedule with relative ease, counting down the days to the end of the season.

This year’s lead up to Clearwater is in definite contrast with last year’s. Last year I raced the two weekends prior to Clearwater at the Amica Sprint Triathlon two weeks before and the Huatulco World Cup six days prior. It was a good plan at the time since Huatulco was the “A” race of the block so Clearwater took the back seat. This year, however, Clearwater is the goal so I made sure to have a full four weeks of uninterrupted training. Also, those Mexican race directors might not put on the best races but they certainly do have their post race parties down to a science. That certainly didn’t help my training for Clearwater 2009… but that’s a whole different story. Anyways, the point is I think I am a lot more prepared for the race in Clearwater this year than I was last year!