From Injury to Ultraman: Quick update on the Journey

It's been an interesting season.  I am in a very different place than I thought I was going to be five months ago.  A quick recap of the year:

This machine is fast!  Can't wait to finally race it in 8 weeks.  

- Put in more pre-season work than I ever had and was running and biking better than I ever have.  This included PR's on the run from every distance from 2 miles to 20k, as well as a 2.5' PR at the 70.3 run distance in my only race.

- A still unknown/undiagnosed injury that causes extreme tightness in my hip flexors/groin/lower abs

- No exercise from Memorial Day through early August

- Event Director for CT Challenge Bike Ride in late July, a ride that funds programming for cancer survivors, where 1350 riders raised over $2.5M

- Return to Bike and Swim Training during the 2nd week of August; a much quicker return to strength on the bike than expected (very pleasantly surprised!)

- 8 mile swim race Labor Day weekend, 4th overall in 3:20:04, which was my longest swim ever - felt strong throughout which was a nice surprise as well.  Though the dirty river led to an infected saddle sore which gave me a 104 fever for 3 days.  On the bright side I lost 7 lbs of the 10 I gained over the summer while I wasn't training - Almost back to race weight!

- After the CT Challenge, decided to change the model of my event management business (Gone Running Events) from a contract model to one where we put on our own events.  Hired a super talented woman to work with me part-time over the  next year, in preparation for our event schedule. Much more on this to come!

So now, I am sitting in the airport, on my way to Kona for the next 12 days.  Looking forward to taking in all the events of IMWC race week and getting in a great training block for Ultraman, with fellow Lifesport Coach Inaki de la Parra.  I'm really looking forward to all the Professional Development opportunities I'll have while I'm out for the race as well - especially attending Training Peaks University which has been on my list for a couple years now.

My brand new bike bag...fingers crossed it makes it safely!

As far as my UM training is going, I will post a bit more about that later but it will be entirely swim/bike based as I am still not running more than 30 min at a time, every 3-4 days.  As crazy as it sounds though I'm starting to get the impression that will be enough to reestablish the muscle memory and ignite the muscles enough to tap into the aerobic strength'established through the swim and bike training.  Looking forward to  what the next 8 weeks have to offer!