Triathlon is a Team Sport

Had my loose clothes. Forgot my Yoga mat. So I grabbed the huge blue beach towel from the car. Rochelle let me borrow her purple mat. My hands were slippery, so I had to lay the towel near the top of the mat for grip. We held downward dog positions for the better part of the class. The shoulder burners / clie from Insanity Core / Balance, and noon swim was an excellent warmup for the pose. My shoulders were on fire.

I tripped out when I looked at the class from Warrior2. I was the only one dripping with sweat. The rest of the class were warrior poses. My glutes got their 2nd workout of the day. If you're familiar with these set of poses, you know it also works the shoulders.

I felt a lot better after class, but had to rush to Sook's to get a quick buzzcut, then to Coconut Island to meet Jeremy for a quick run. We did the 5k route in 13:30 + 12:00 negative split. Very easy, until we loosened up after the bridge, going downhill.

We talked about how we felt before this race, but more so about Ironman. His mind is set on qualifying. I told him I didn't feel like I was pushing hard enough on my swims and was thinking about swimming at 5:30am before my P90x or Insanity workouts on MWF.

Cousin Mark called me soon after, inviting me to a practice sprint tri the following morning (Friday). 8am would be too late, so they agreed to push it up to 7am. I knew Jeremy wanted to get in a bike ride before the race so I got him in too. I met Tanner, another fresh young triathlete. I don't think he trained as hard as Brandon did, but he's got a lot of heart and will finish strong. Mark is going to a concert the night before. lol

When you think about doing a triathlon, you think of it as a solo event. Nobody can physically help you progress forward during a race. I trained solo for my recent races. I finished. But I didn't do as well as I'd like. Training solo, I didn't push myself hard enough. I forced myself into isolation during training, and it also felt like it on the races.

I called Adam one day and he invited me to a group ride. That was probably the most beneficial change to my training I have ever done. The camaraderie. We bounce ideas off each other. Most times Adam and Joe have already experienced them and can give us a quick, detailed answer along with justification.

We want to continue the weekly, long group workouts beyond the race. I also suggested to Adam that we begin hosting monthly triathlons at the beach, similar to TeamMangoRaces on the west side. We can offset the schedule so people could do either race, and so they don't coincide with big events.

Coach Jess sent me some motivational advice today. Such a small gesture really does help me a ton.