Racing this weekend...

Tomorrow morning I will be leaving with a couple of my friends to head up to Steamboat Springs for an Olympic-distance tri on Sunday. It's a gorgeous venue, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to hitting up the hot springs post-race! This week there's been this tiny little event going on throughout Colorado, the USA Pro Cycling Championships. Tomorrow's stage actually starts in Steamboat and continues on to Breckenridge. We'll have to take some detours to get there, but we're hoping that we'll be able to stop and catch the riders as the go through Kremmling. While I'm sad that I will be missing the race in Golden and Denver on all of the routes I typically ride, I'm happy I'll be able to catch a little bit of the excitement. There's also the DVR, since it will be on NBC on Sunday afternoon!

The past couple of weeks have been fairly intense with our new CTS coach, Lindsay. I've done several sets of Under/Overs on the bike. For those you basically spend some time right under your threshold, then some time over, then more time just under. And do it three times. They're tough! I know it's making me stronger, though, and teaching me to be better about maintaining specific power zones. We also did a killer track workout on Wednesday night, and a pretty tough swim Wednesday morning. Hopefully I'll be rested and feeling strong on Sunday!

All almond butters are not created equal...

I just had this random epiphany while I was eating a banana with a pack of Justin's almond butter. It just tasted so, so much better than the store brand I've been buying in a jar. I think next time I'm splurging and it'll be worth it. That is all!

Open Water Swim Workout

Swimming with my sister in the Comal River (I'm in the green cap).

Sorry it's been a little quiet recently on this blog. I've been in real need of a recharge, both in my PhD work and in life in general for the past month or so. I finally got it when I was on vacation with my family in New Braunfels, Texas last week. It was hot, but I loved every second of it. I truly treasure my family, and any time I get to spend with them is really happy for me. My sister is also a triathlete. She's super duper speedy (in fact she actually just got her pro card), but swimming is one area where our ability levels are about equal. We swam in the river together a few times last week, and the picture above was from us doing a set that her coach recommended. I thought it was great because too often we just get in the water and swim when it comes to not being in a pool. This was a great way to break it up a little and add some speedier efforts.

After a 15 minute warmup (upstream, though with the drought and subsequent low-water levels, the current was pretty tame this year), we did this set:
5x{2 min kick, 2 min build, 2 min fast}.
It was good enough to tire me out, for sure! I just set my watch timer to 2 minutes and when it beeped, I would stop, get her attention, and we'd switch. I highly recommend trying this out. Another good thing to do is something like 50 strokes fast/50 steady, 40 fast/ 40 steady, etc. until you get to 10, then ladder back up.

Happy swimming!