The Friday Top Five: Top Five Things I Love About Training For Rev3 Cedar Point Full

Do you know why it's Sunday and I am posting the Friday Top Five today?!  Because I am convinced my coach is trying to kill me. Honestly, I am not sure what I did to piss her off....

I think that working with a coach has has made one thing glaringly obvious this year: I had NO idea what the heck I was doing last year when I trained on my own. NOW, that is NOT to say that you can not train your proverbial ass off and race well. I really believe that for people with no time to set up workouts or, more importantly, asses the data from your workouts in any meaningful way, I would highly recommend going this route. The other problem with assessing your own data is that it is much too easy to lie to yourself about why you are not performing at a high level.

Without further adieu....

Top Five Things I Love About Training For Rev3 Cedar Point Full

5) PERSPECTIVE: Training for the Rev3 full provides perspective on what is really important. Training for the full distance is time-consuming. If I do not get my ass out of bed and up at five in the morning for a 6 hour ride, it CAN NOT happen. Why?  Playing catch with my boys, building legos with the bambini, or coloring pictures with my girls pays more dividends down the road than beating my last Iron distance time by an hour. Not to mention that staying gainfully employed means making sure I don't substitute training for say, syllabus design.

4) COACH MARY: Seeing steady progress in my swim and run are exciting. Coach Mary is the ultimate jedi-f-ing-Master. I am not sure how I arrived at this level of fitness after not running for 8 WEEKS, but I am excited that I am not hurting anymore and running fairly solid. I learned a lot this season about training, pacing, nutrition (and Coach Mary learned something about my nutrition plan.... I call it the "Olivieri Small Panini Plan, or just O.S.P.P. for short). Don't worry, I'll explain my "untraditional" nutrition plan in a future post. 

The progress has not been limited to the bike. I have done several hour swims in open water the last few weeks. I am swimming as fast this season sans wetsuit as I was swimming last year WITH my wetsuit. If that is not improvement....

After a few long rides in some rolling hills, I also appreciate how quickly my bike fitness improves. I went out for a ride on a course I have ridden a bunch of times. I was scheduled for an easy hour zone two ride the other day. Something about hitting hills makes going into that westerly New York wind a heck of a lot easier.

3) ELITISM: There is no substitute for that totally elitist, self-rightous feeling that comes after finishing an long run before seven or eight in the morning. I also enjoy casually mentioning the fact that I "just rode six hours today, now I am going to the pool with my family for the rest of the afternoon." Sure, snobbery is not attractive. If you want to truly come off as being an elitist, you have to be (or at least pretend) that you are totally aloof to the fact that you are acting like Thurston Howell. 

No one looks better in spandex than a disproportionate
Barbie. 

2) SPANDEX: Look, if I have to wear it to race, I better have the svelte, rippled physique of a seventeen year old Swedish downhill skier (even I am not sure how I arrived there with that one, but go with it). Sure, my wife makes fun of me because of my 80's aerobic attire, but if I need to wear spandex—and, boy do I ever—I might as well be in my best physical shape of the year. 

1) FOOD: Consuming over 10,000 calories on any given day is both fun and annoys the heck out of many of my friends. It is only during Iron distance training that I can somehow justify eating half of a sheet pizza, drinking a gigantic chocolate milkshake, and having a bowl of ice cream for an evening snack.





RANDOM CRAZINESS:

Building over the past couple of weeks has been both EXciting and EXhausting. I can barely log my workouts for Coach Mary because as soon as I get home from a six hour ride, my kids ask me to go on a bike ride with them. I look at them suspiciously, but then I remember that they are way too young to lay on the sarcasm that thickly.

• Yesterday after my ride, Julian asks me "...when I get older, can I have your  Kestrel so I can beat me you at Ironman.

I said, "Julian, what makes you think you are going to beat me at Ironman?" He replied, "Dad, I am really fast, and you will be older."

• I remember when going out for a 10k, an hour bike, and a 1000 yard swim seemed like crazy long distances to have to traverse. I have an hour bike tomorrow and I am like "thank goodness!"

Okay, that's all for now. Looking forward to seeing all my Trakkers teammates and blogger buddies at REV3 Cedar Point in 20 DAYS!

Train Smart!