May Races and Countdown to Racine

May was a ridiculous month for me: MBA finals and graduation, races, travel to New York for work, travel to CO for fun. Although it was a great month, each Monday I would see the note in my calendar outlining my training for the week and the remaining training weeks to Racine. 8 weeks, 7 weeks, 6 weeks...as each week it would tick down, I started to question why I decided to do this race rather than Steelhead which is a month later. This week marks five weeks to Racine. Last week, I finally felt like I was getting it together with slow-but-pain-free training and completing all my prescribed workouts. "Yeah," I said. "Maybe this won't be a disaster after all."

My May and June races thus far have been less than stellar. Kansas City Triathlon was a mediocre performance, Bolder Boulder was my slowest time of the 4 times I've raced it and a last minute decision to race Omaha Women's Tri resulted in me pulling out of the Athena National Championships the following week. The result: a new found focus to make the most of these last 5 weeks of training leading up to Racine. This means sticking to my schedule (including long rides and long runs) even in the most awful of conditions. Last night I did a 2 hr brick workout which included a 96ish minute ride and a 20 minute run. Temps were 97 when I started and 93 when I finished. The intense heat forced me to ride slow to keep my heart rate down and religiously take in fluid and nutrition. I started to feel a little nauseous about 60 minutes in but it passed and by the time I got to the run, I was actually relatively comfortable.

This weekend I'll have a nearly 2 hr run on Saturday and a 3.5 hr bike on Sunday, riding the annual Rollin to Colon charity race. Temps are expected to be near 100 degrees on Sunday and we ride out at 7:30a. Although this record heat is miserable for training, I'm hoping it will help me build some tolerance to the heat. Being the slightly OCD individual that I am, I have been reviewing the historical temperatures of Racine over the past 2 years. July temps have been primarily in the high 70s, low 80s with the occasional 90 degree day. This means there's a good chance that the weather will be fairly moderate compared to what we're experiencing now in Omaha. But as we all know, it will be what it will be...hoping for the best.  Stay tuned.