A year of 3's

It's been a while since we did an entry, it sucks when real life and grown adults stuff gets in the way of fun. Our year has been crazy busy with work, life and the usual nuances of adulthood. Our workout life has been pretty uneventful, since we are keeping our racing limited we don't have as many exciting things to share when it comes to triathlon... You get us... We hope.

So what have we been up to, not much... Honestly.  Back in February we did our 3rd half marathon. Our 2nd time doing The Cowtown. It was a run that we did to keep a tradition we are trying to start to do The Cowtown and try to get our medal display that they normally have after you run a few of them. This time is 3 medal display, so we are only 2 away :).

Anyways, it was a run that we had not trained much for. Last year if you remember we wanted to close the year with the Dallas marathon! that clearly didn't happen and the wheels fell off after that. We couldn't get our motivation to run or do major workouts, then family in town, the holidays, the cold weather, the really cold weather just added up to no motivation and lack of training. Well.... Guess what... Lack of training sucks when you try to run a half marathon or try to run... period. We had a long run before it of about 10 miles, we felt pretty good but we knew we were not in for any PRs. But we were fine with it, we know we have a long year ahead of us and we are taking it slow. With our races this year, going and killing a super fast half Mary is great but it is not worth at the end with the recovery and how much it would hurt. So we did it... Puli managed a PR by a little over a minute and I managed to finish not walking, not a PR but surely felt every mile of those 13.1. 

We know it's not an excuse, but the cold weather really messed us up this year...we will pay for that in the summer but for now we just want warmer temps. So finally we feel like we've been getting to a constant good volume of workouts, not 100% but more than 50%. We are feeling stronger on our swimming and biking but our run has suffered a lot since we haven't done much of it, crappy weather means not going outside to run.

On Sunday we are going to our 3rd Half Ironman. It will be 70.3 Ironman Texas. We know it is going to be an interesting race, we've had a couple of confidence booster workouts where we feel awesome about it so we will see. Last year our volume was really starting to peak for ironman Texas and burn out was also kicking in, so this year we feel we are more rested so hope that it actually translates to bodies more recovered, we will see... Stay tuned for updates on it.

By now you probably saw the trend... A year of 3s. 3rd half marathon, 3rd half ironman, and you got it, 2nd AND 3rd Full distance with Challenge Atlantic City and Ironman Arizona. Our peak will start probably when we come back from Galveston next week, it will be a good gauge but unlike last year we don't feel burned out. We are trying to keep ourselves from triathlon burnout as we still have 7 months of heavy workouts. A lot can happen and getting injured ain't going to be one of them. :)

So... For now... Hope you haven't missed us too much, we will try to do better, hopefully you will get to see more of us either here or on Res' blog and we can share more of what we've been up to. Hope you enjoy these videos we are leaving you with. After all we TRI to have fun and we pay to have this fun... Might as well... Enjoy the ride :)

The first Five55 series

So we did our first Five55 series race today. http://www.five55series.com/race-info-dallas.php

It is a race in a few cities that consists of a 500m swim at a local lake, a 5k and the other 5 is because it is on the 5th of every month. We have been wanting to do it but our schedules weren't matching. Finally we got to do it tonight. It is a good race because it is not that crowded. Only a couple dozen people. The temperature today was very hot 100+ at 6 pm. Res and I had registered and got body marked. I was trying to drink some water but our bottles were frozen. Couldn't get much in. By 6:30 males got in the water. We started shortly after. The water was hot, I was starting to get used to the water getting actually cooler. But not tonight. The water was slow, my arms were feeling heavy. The buoys seemed just far, at the end the swim was bit longer than the promised 500 meters. I started in the back of the pack didn't get passed as much and passed a few until I got cut and had to stop for a second to let the guy get by. Got out of the water in 14:29 a bit slower than I expected but off to transition and to the run. Put my shoes on, sunglasses, hat and off I went. The run was painful. I guess the water heat was starting to catch on to me and it was still hot by the time we got off the water. I still pushed but before the u-turn I had to walk for about 30 seconds. Got to the return and got some water and gatorade and started going back. I realized that I was not last but wasn't that far from being the last guy. Saw Res and she was going strong and trying to catch the 3 girls in front of her. I got back my 5K time today 30:11, considering that my time on Sunday's sprint practice was closer to 26:00 it was not a good day. I sat down and waited for Res. I was really happy to see that she did catch 2 of the girls in front of her and got second place of the women. A good short race, recommended to all interested to get some open water practice out there. Just wished it was a bit cooler out there, results might have been different.