Back running

After two weeks of no running at all I've slowly but surely started running again. Closely paying attention to my knee so as to not injure it again. I doubt it it 100% yet but I've done aa couple 30min runs and haven't felt any noticeable pain. I put some arch supports into my running shoes and they seem to work well.

During the Tour de France I did quite a good amount of riding myself too. I'm starting to feel really strong even riding long times on the flats which has been a weakness. Now is time to start some good hilly riding though as my end of season objective, Elbaman 70.3 has quite a bit of climbing on the bike leg!

Swimming is an entire different story though...I've swam a combined 30min since my last swim workout in Carlsbad

On another note the WRC circus has arrived to town. I'm not a motorsport fan but I might drag my ass downtown someday to catch some of the expo action. At least check out the podium girls :P
I'll try to get some photos.

Fear of DNF

First of all sorry for the lack of posting but I’ve decided not to write so much of the negative whinigs anymore! As I recently wrote on twitter “if life didn't suck a little at times, the good times wouldn't feel so good then, and for 99% life still is awesome!” That’s my opinion of course and you may disagree or agree..

As has been the case the whole time during my athletic career, my biggest obstacles to overcome have been injuries and under-recovery. In the past couple of weeks I have yet again suffered from both. Most recently from yet another injury, a mild case of runners knee. That made me decide not to race at the half-iron nationals this weekend. I have raced (and finished) too many races with injuries and I don’t like to do that too much, especially on races that aren’t THAT important. I would've only either hurt the knee very badly or hurt it and DNFd.

Endurance athletes have said to get better with age (to a certain point) and much has to do with the physical qualities that need (a lot of) time to improve. BUT a very big thing is also the fact that age brings the experience and confidence to make right, smart decisions. Last time I had this exact same injury I wondered for too long of what was wrong and continued to run. It took me a few months before I was able to run pain-free again. This time I decided to take at least a week of rest from running so I could still end the season on a good note.

Meanwhile I have been able to focus more on my riding and I have never felt this good and strong on the bike. That’s the real beauty of triathlon: most injuries don’t mean completely time off from training but some quality can still be done.

So why no swimming? Well pools are closed until August, open waters are quite cold and my wetsuit is still on its way, this time should be pretty close already. I did however receive my Blueseventy pointzero3+ suit (that I was supposed to wear in Hawaii 70.3) this week. And while it’s a very fast suit, it doesn’t make you any warmer swimming that sans suit. I lasted about 0.03 seconds in the water when I tried swimming. So most likely had I raced this weekend I wouldn’t even have survived the swim! The suit does however make me look über hot! Even hotter than Brüno LOL

-JH

so that happened...

I definitely had trained myself into a good overreached state by the time I left California. What I didn't take into account was that the 2-day travel back home acompanied with the 10 hour time-difference was going to be very hard. Thus when I got home my body completely shut down and decided to take a 2-week summer holiday.

So unable to do any good training for two weeks I feel like starting from scratch again. And to not make things too easy I have some sort of knee-hurt on my left and my left ankle that has been hurting on/off for a couple months is again giving trouble.

But anyways I have about 10 days to try get ready for half-ironman nationals and it seems like I'm only going to ride for training. I still havent received my wetsuit that has been doing its own tour de Scandinavia for a few months so I can't swim either...or I could but getting iced after 5 mins in very cold water isn't that much fun.

It's good to sometimes have a bit of a low period though as the season is still long and there's a nice rae waiting at the end!

-JH

Humour is said to be helping combat fatigue