Tune-Up

Today we took a trip an hour south to Fort De Soto park where I raced the Sun Coast triathlon, a sprint distance event. I first want to thank Fred from Design Sports for organizing such a great event. It was great to see so many juniors participating in the sport.

The start of the event was at 7:30 am and with the sun rising only a few minutes before the start, it was still dark when we arrived to register and set up transition. Pretty crazy atmosphere running around in the dark trying to get oriented. Then when I finally got out to the beach, I was greeted with choppy water like I had never raced in before. Plus the salt water swim was a first for me.

Getting through the tough 1/3 mile swim ended up being not as bad as I thought. Although keeping on course was tough when waves were easily above the markers at times. Also the wave start system they used meant I was catching many of the earlier starters, which made for a few close calls of pushing someone under the water by accident.

Onto the bike I pushed near maximum pace and averaged around 45 kph. A little tail wind also helped get speeds of 55 kph on the back stretch. Pretty fun to hit that kind of speeds.

In the run I wanted to push my pace and work on speed. The 5km distance flew by and I was very happy with the feeling my legs had.

In the end I finished with a time gap over 2nd place of about 5 minutes. With this kind of fitness, I am feeling more and more confident this world championships will be a good event for me. Hopefully all the other parts of the puzzle come together in the coming weeks.

Next on the plan is a few more days of harder training before the final recovery period.

Training with Baywatch

Greetings from sunny Florida! At least that is what all the post cards say from here...

And sunny it is! One of the few benefits of being a professional athlete in a sport that doesn't pay, is the locations of the events. This year Florida, next year Hawaii? Perhaps... but more likely two years away.

Anyways, life and training are going very well here in Florida. Riding has really picked up now the weather is warm and sunny. Also I have been learning how to open water swim in salt water, which is a new one for me. Really tough to not choke on the strong tasting salt water.

Today I also found a perfect training group to help me with the swim preparations. Clearwater beach's own Baywatch! Ok... no Pamela Anderson to swim with, but the folks from the life guard station let me join their morning swim/run workout. I think this will be very helpful in allowing me to do a good swim during the race. Perhaps you can see from the picture above which is me? Just look for the little bit different colored one...

In other news... I finally lost my big toe nail! It's been falling off since my race in Antwerp and today if finally went all the way. It's my first lost toe nail so I must be a real runner/triathlete now. Hopefully this is also my last as it is pretty disguesting now.

More coming soon...

-Darby

Getting 'Girl-ed'

After a very successful past two months of training and racing, I am leaving Finland to do my final preparations for the 70.3 worlds in Florida. My wife Emilia, our daughter and I will spend one month in Florida and experience all the sun we can imagine, and of course fine tuning my training to do my largest race of the year.

Quick summary of the past month:

Swimming a ton.... many thanks to the Jani and Jari from the Aurajoen Uinti swim club who have allowed me to train with there team a few days per week. What a difference it makes to swim with swimmers! I really learned a lot and was humbled every day. Especially when even the slowest 15 year old girl could beat me!!! But its all part of the process of learning and getting better.

Running: I have focused on speed work and racing for the past month or two and it has showed with races going very well and training times getting faster. Still have some work to do before race day but all it going in the right direction.

Cycling: Weather in Finland cooperated for much of the past two months and I managed to get some good rides in. However, as the darkness and cold has been increasing the past couple weeks, I have started to lose motivation to train by myself. Florida will be the right place to do the final kms for cycling though.

Overall, I am very happy with my preparation and now look forward to a final push of training in Florida. And of course a little sunny vacation never hurts during late October and November in Finland!

All the best,

Darby