early thoughts on the season

My first early bird series has been a lot of fun so far. We had very cold weather the first week and the attendance could have been better. However, I was very happy to have another teammate around (Laura) during the whole thing. She was a great wheel to follow and learn from. My experience so far on a team has been great. The second week, I raced with another 4/5 racer (Ari) who is an experienced triathlete and Serenity (who I met at my very first road race - Pescadero Coastal Classic - back in June 2017). Serenity gave Ari a leadout and I chased for a third place finish. My sprint abilities are still quite nascent. I can never stay out of the saddle for very long.

Training Takeaways:

• work on holding 30'' sprints
• work on bike handling and wheel bumping

Initial Team Thoughts:

Team camp is just a few days away but so far my impressions have been such: the women are fast but are also very accomplished and highly prioritize life off the bike. They  It does feel like a lot of the women on my team are teamwork-oriented but more free-spirited and self-driven than the other teams I've seen, which is very much in line with the way I am. I also happened to click more with the girls on this team in my short two years of road and triathlon cycling.

Cycling Goals:

Goals are arbitrary but they are useful markers.

1. Keep the ride stoke alive. - the reasons for this goal are obvious. I want to keep the passion alive. That means no burning out. No injuring myself. And being mindful of the joys and difficulties of racing!

2. Dominate W4/5 with my new team. - very excited to have some strong women starting out in cat 4 with me, Most of the women I knew on the team had already upgraded to cat 3 so I was worried I'd be racing alone but it's good to know I'll have someone to feed off of in my field.

3. Ride 5,000 miles for the year. - this is a very realistic goal of about 96 miles per week. My weekly mileage will vary anywhere from 100-150 mpw!

4. PR Hawk Hill (aiming for top 10 leaderboard, which means at least 8:08). - realistically, this won't happen until I start doing structured cycling blocks. However, I have a lot of fitness from last season that is carrying over and it's entirely possible for me to move a few ranks on this climb if February and March go well!

Training:

It's going to be an interesting season. More than ever, I am focused on the best possible version of myself and I believe I am going to be successful this time facing my body composition goals. I'm on the right path for balance. I have driving goals. And I can actually do this. Aiming for base, strength, and weight loss this January through March.

The IRONMAN in July is going to hamper a lot of cycling-specific training as there will be a lot of time spent *not* cycling. But after the IRONMAN, my bike race season is going to be awesome as I can start integrating structured workouts.

The long runs, especially, will be detrimental to weekend racing so I think I'll limit 1.5+hr long runs to mid-week and not before a major race. I think I have a fairly good system going so far with regard to maintaining run fitness. I'm doing treadmill to warm up at the gym and do several short morning jogs with Mashi in the morning. I don't think that I'll allow myself to do long runs of more than 1.5hrs until I can get my weight down and we get closer to IRONMAN Canada.

Swimming I don't view as much of a problem, except for the time commitment. I am optimizing pool time by focusing only on technique and getting comfortable in the water (maybe in lieu of lunch hour?).