Leon’s Tri 2012

About two weeks ago, three people emailed one weekend to make sure I was ok after I hadn't posted on twitter/facebook/blog or anything for a while. This made me realize that I have so many great friends I have made doing endurance sports and it's been a long time since I've been online and posted anything.

To those that were concerned, thank you, I appreciate your messages. I'm 100% fine, actually I'm really good. There have just been other things in my life that required my attention and triathlon took a back seat for a little while. We sold our house which was a challenge having a two year old and me working at home the majority of the time. Then we found a new house but couldn't move for a few days and then had some projects we had to do. We are thrilled with the new house and very fortunate we could sell our old house and move, but it was very stressful and time consuming. At the same time I took on more responsibility at work and have been working long hours for a while now. Anyway, that all meant that I had to miss some workouts and I had zero time for being on facebook/slowtwitch/etc. I ended up missing two races in May due to moving which made Leon's Tri my first real race of the year.


Swim 20:27 – I started the swim wide and just wanted to have a solid swim to measure my fitness. The swim felt awesome. I was never once breathing hard and out in no time. I'm sure the course was a bit short as I went 20:27, but it felt and looked the same as last year and I went about a full minute faster. The biggest difference is last year I came out of the water exhausted and swam really hard, this year it felt like a warm up. I believe I was in about 15^th overall after the swim and I had the 36^th fastest swim of the day…. very unusual for me. All the swimming over the winter is paying off.


Bike 1:00:04 – Last year I crushed the bike and made up a ton of ground, but then fell apart on the run. So this year I held back and really focused on just relaxing and taking in some nutrition for the first half. Then in the second half I tried to ride a little harder but my legs weren't feeling it, so I backed down. I ended up holding 5 watts less than last year and came into T2 in 7^th (compared to 3^rd last year.


Run 36:50 – I felt pretty good leaving T2 but just like on the bike my legs just weren't there today. This has happened before and usually they just need a mile to get going, so I figured if I just held on and didn't force it I would be able to speed up. Well, my legs never felt better and I never picked up the pace. The good news is, I never felt worse and never slowed down either. It was kind of strange because I felt like I could have held the same pace for 13.1 miles, but I just couldn't speed up at all.


2:00:01 – 9^th overall


I wasn't sure what to expect going into this race, but now that it is over, I guess it turned out exactly like I should have expected. My weakness has always been and is still the swim. Over the winter I focused on swimming and swam much more than ever before while riding/running a little less. That seems to have paid off because I swam faster and felt better than ever coming out of the water. Both my bike and run were just a little slower that I would have liked/expected, but it's the first race of the season and I still have a few months to get them back.


Overall, it was uneventful but great start to the season. I had absolutely zero issues with gear/nutrition/pacing/anything and was in full control of my race the entire time. To make the day even better I raced on a team with a few of my Zoot Ultra Tri Team teammates and we won the Co-Ed team challenge.


The highlight of the day had to be when my two year old daughter got body marked before the race, told me she was going to show me how to swim, and then was waiting for me at the finish line to run with me. As usual thank you to Theresa and Abigail for supporting all of my training and racing, and to Zoot and our Ultra team sponsors. On that note, I had the opportunity to race in the Zoot Kiawe. For about 3 years now, I've felt the Ultra Race 2.0 were the best Zoot shoes ever made, but the Kiawe is very quickly changing my mind. If you are look for a light weight race shoe for tri's, definitely take a look at the Kiawe.

Zoot Camp 2012

Since I'm on a flight with no wireless internet and I'm caught up on all my email that is synced on my computer I finally have time to write a blog post. I'm on the way home from another great weekend with the Zoot Ultra Team and our sponsors in Carlsbad and wanted to check in and share a few thoughts.



First of all, I have to say that year after year the team camp is one of my favorite times of the year. We don't really train, just hang out for two days but it is always a great time. Every year I make new friends and always learn something new at the camp. This year was no different.



Of course we had fun, got lots of great product from sponsors, learned about current and future products, but something else became obvious to me this year. The reason I like Zoot so much is how passionate and committed everyone is.



I had the opportunity to talk individually with about half of the Zoot employees throughout the weekend and it was apparent that every single one of them was passionate about what they did and committed to making the best products they can. They don't work for Zoot because it is their job; they work for Zoot because they want to make appearal, shoes, etc.



Three years ago Dave told me he does not want to hear that I like Zoot shoes, but he wants to know about every issue or complaint. I realized this weekend it's not just Dave, it's everyone at Zoot. They are a very close and small team (11 people) but every one of them I have worked with truly wants to make the best product they possibly can.



So, Jake, Molly, Dave, Steve, Shaun, Marirose, and Kevin, THANK YOU for making awesome gear and always listening to our feedback. I'm honored to be able to continue working with you for another year and am excited to see what you come up with next.



On that front, we got a sneak preview of a new shoe coming out in June that I'm really excited about. This is a totally different shoe then the current line and was built from scratch. It was cool to see how excited Dave was about this shoe. A few pictures are starting to show up on twitter and Zoot athletes.  Some of our other sponsors had some great products I'm excited about as well.  The SPY Optics Screws glasses fit great, stay in place and are very comfortable, I can't wait to get some more of their sunglasses.  Since I love having data on all my training and racing the Garmin 910XT is also going to be great.



Anyway, my realization about how passionate the Zoot team is really got me thinking about other situations in my life. I realized that my best days whether at home, work or in triathlon were when I was truly committed to and passionate about something. However recently I have been taking on more and more responsibility at work in an effort to grow and expand my career.  At the moment I'm stretched pretty thin and I'm not as committed to a few things as I want to be. Now that I realized this, I'm working hard to take care of all the extra noise in my life at the moment, so I can quickly get back to really being focused on the things I want to: My family, my racing, and certain parts of my job.



In other news, last month I did the March Madness Half Marathon in Cary, IL. It was about 40 degrees warmer then usual and somehow I think the hills grow every year. I still had a pretty good run and was about 30 seconds slower than my PR on that course. I was able to place 7^th overall (again). More importantly, my swim continues to improve every month.



I'm also excited to share that I was selected as Athlete of the Month in the April edition of Chicago Athlete Magazine.

Coming up next I have two races scheduled for May. Wildflower on the west coast, and American Zofingen on the east coast.  It may be a bit before I check in on the blog again, but I will as soon as I have a chance.