Happy New Year!
I am SO TIRED of looking at my post from Guatape. And after battling not one but TWO viruses on my website in the past month I found myself looking at that post a lot. I must post something new! If you visited my website you may have been notified that it was an “attack” site. I’m sorry if my website attacked you. Very aggressive, my website. Just like real-life Kevin. The Google Reader users out there can pay no mind to this apology.
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.
Sydney
Here is my race report from Sydney (well, it’s actually just a gloss-over as I don’t feel like reliving that race by typing out a long, drawn out report):
I came out of the water near the back of a long line of men and immediately made what turned out to be a bad assumption out of T1. I was just acting on my opinion of the cycling skills of the men right in front of me. But as Manny Huerta pointed out later: “Kevin, assumptions are the beginning of all #$%@-ups.” Or at least that’s what Brett Sutton used to tell him. My assumption was no different. This isn’t to say that I’m blaming everyone else in my small five man pack for not bridging to the front pack – of course we all share in that blame. A few minutes later the skies opened up and I spent the next hour riding around in the rain on the oil covered streets of Sydney’s central business district getting yelled at in Swiss-German to pull through. I pulled out on the run to save my foot from further injury.
I’m back in Florida now and back to training. Well, mostly: I’m on day 10 of a doctor-ordered 14 day period off running. My foot is definitely improving so that’s a good sign. Hopefully I’m back to running soon, but due to this hiatus from running I pulled out of the Monterrey World Cup next month. That kind of sucks but I would rather be healthy later in the season than race now and risk worsening my condition.
That’s all for now!
Oh Yeah I Raced This Past Weekend
The race this past weekend blended so well into my normal routine that I almost forgot to post about it! Other than acting as a homestay for Barrett Brandon and his wife Lauren, as well as Greg “the Future of Triathlon” Billington, I didn’t stray too far from the norm.
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.
The Fitness Beard
So I have a beard. This isn’t to say it’s a great beard. In fact it’s probably only a step away from “patchy facial hair,” but I think it just barely squeezes by the threshold of beard status.
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!
Are We There Yet??
Last week I set off from the cold, snowy north in search of a warmer climate to spend the winter months, the destination being central Florida and Jarrod Shoemaker’s training group. My plan was to stop to visit a few friends in Texas on the way and get in some training while also breaking up the long drives. All went to plan except for the training part. Whether it was a bad salad from a Subway in Amarillo (not sure there is such a thing as a good Subway salad actually) or a final parting blow from the Olympic Training Center in the form of a nasty stomach virus (as usual I blame the wrestlers) I don’t know, but I can say I got sicker than I have in a long time. Ugh!
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!
