Happy Birthday

It's official. The Perfect Storm has materialized over the Northeast. It's October 25 and we're supposed to get our first snow/rain mix tonight, with pure snow flying in the peaks. Along with this magnificent collision of pressure systems, I awoke on my 27th birthday this morning to a present of freezing drizzle, wind, darkness, and a headache that made me feel stuck in a vice every second of this day. But after relaxing this afternoon with a warm, deep cup of red tea (and 4 motrin ground up and mixed into my potion), things finally started to ease.

It's been a good year, as I've eluded to in previous posts. If I look at my season goals from last year (which, by no coincidence, I sat down and set on this very day as I do every year), I can start to head into the new year with a renewed sense of athletic self. In addition, this year I made it a habit to reflect on every race (immediately after the event) and identify 3 positive things that occurred during the race, and 3 things that I would like to work on this off-season and during next year's events. For now, I'd like to highlight a few of the latter.

One thing I learned from this year was the importance of the taper. In almost every single event I raced this past season, I know that I stepped on the start line in a slightly under-recovered state. In the races in which I forced myself to taper in the lead-up (which, at the time, felt like too much taper), I saw the greatest performances. Easier said than done, but this year's mantra in the lead-up to my A-races will be: less is more.

Another critical thing I learned revolves around specificity in training on the bike. Looking back over my entire season, I saw the strongest overall bike performances just after my first Build phase of my periodization cycle (pre-season). As the summer progressed, I didn't lose any of that fitness on the bike, but I didn't really gain any of significance. Reviewing my workouts, this was largely due to the reduction of specific workouts on the bike, in lieu of tempo rides and bricks. As such, I'll be making a significant effort to carry specific, power-based training workouts throughout the entire season.

Finally, running. I can't believe the running strength I gained over the final weeks of the season leading up to the marathon. Granted, I was cramming an enormous amount of run-specific work into an incredibly short period of time, but the benefits were huge. The key? The long runs, undoubtedly. But these long runs were different than the ones I ran all summer. Namely, they were really, really long. Given my focus on the intermediate distance triathlons next year, it shouldn't be hard to integrate these longer, long runs into the plans, but nevertheless, they will be critical.

Over the next several days, I'll be completing my annual plan for 2005-06. In just over a week, I'll be starting to ease myself back into my structured workouts. Right now, my legs are charged up and ready to go, my motivation is high, and I'm completely stoked for another year of this crazy Grind we call life.