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October 12,
2003:
It sure has been a while since I posted a
journal entry on the web site. Sorry.
Anyway, I will be posting something every day
from Kona.
This is my second trip to Kona in the past
month. Last year I went to Kona for 2 weeks
of training at the beginning of September then
returned to Victoria for three weeks then back
to the Big Island for race week. This year I
went to Kona in mid-September for 14 days and
returned to Victoria for 2 1/2 weeks. In Kona
I did most of my training solo except for the
occasional swim with the Kona Aquatics Masters
club and a couple of ocean swims with local
fast guy triathlete James Codder. The one big
difference compared to last year is that I
stayed at altitude while on the Big Island and
would drive 50 minutes down the mountain to
Kona each day. I would base myself from the
pool then drive back up the mountain at the
end of the day. I have done the live high
train low thing in the past and found that it
really helped with my performance so why not
do it in Kona. Living on the side of a
mountain alone was quite difficult at times.
Yes, I got a bit lonely. I had no TV but
luckily I had a telephone connection so I
could e-mail friends back home particularly a
real good friend back home that wrote some
pretty funny e-mails - THANKS! Anyway, the
solo period really made me strong mentally for
race day. Although, when I got back to
Victoria I did a good amount of training with
the super speedy National Triathlon Training
Center (www.NTTC.ca). Most of the group is
getting ready for the last few World Cups and
Worlds. I went from solo boy to training with
people all the time. I definitely went from
one extreme to the other.
After Ironman Germany I was pretty upset that
I faded towards the end of the marathon. I
went from almost catching the race winner to
barely hanging on to 4th. I took a couple of
weeks off from training to really let my body
recover; but, I was busy planning my training
program for Kona. I was fortunate to be able
to get some guidance on how to properly
prepare for Ironman from the legend Mark
Allen. His knowledge on training for Ironman
is incredible.
I trained really hard for this sucker. I dug
deep during many training sessions and I
needed to make sure that I got to the start
line fresh to race hard without any lingering
tiredness from the past two months of
training. I decided to get the advice on how
to set up a proper taper from super coach
Lance Watson who is the head coach at NTTC.
Lance is the king of designing an awesome
taper. It basically is a two week taper with
a ton of rest with very low training volume.
My body is so used to training all the time
that it actually has shut down; but, this is
good because it is rejuvenating. I am
sleeping a lot and hungry all the time as my
body rebuilds.
I should start to feel better towards the
middle of this week when Lance has a few
workouts for me to reactivate my system.
Today was my last day of coffee! Argh! I am
already looking forward to some strong Kona
coffee race morning!
Yesterday was a day off from training and
today all I have to do is a 30 minute jog once
I get to the condo.
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