Last June I partially tore my left achilles tendon. I was lucky because it wasn't a complete rupture, a subject that has constantly been in the back of my head since my father ruptured both of his and I got to see the tendon literally coil into a bump near the top of his calf. So May 2011 was my last race, which didn't go particularly well, I did 2/3 of the Subaru Victoria 70.3 and had to leave the run to my friend Shauna, and the rest of the year was a bust while I recovered.
Nine months later and I finally have returned to a sport that I love so much and it felt great. March 11th was the UBC Triathlon, my first triathlon in quite some time and it went pretty well. The training w/ Bjoern at UBC Dolphins has done wonders to my swim, which resulted in me taking out the 1.5k swim in 26:52, a PB. Yes, there was some drafting involved, but the 500m splits are faster than my last 500m swim TT during the 2011 UBCTC Race Series. A VERY long T1 after and I was flying down the bike course on my trusty Orbea, although admittedly the Cervelo should have been used. The bike wasn't ideal, mainly because the last lap was complete shite due to my aching back from being in an overly aggressive position in the drops or doing the Merckx style TT (yes, the Cervelo should have DEFINITELY been used). That didn't matter, though, because despite my Garmin failing (database full apparently) I was able to run myself into the ground and I finished strong. Strong enough that I ran 2 minutes shy of my 10k PB. Given I had just swam 1.5k and biked 40k, that's pretty good run in my book. 2011 is a year I'd like to forget, but the latter part of the year (after getting the okay to start training again) allowed me to build my base line and 2012 looks promising. What's next? Time to up my running since I want to set a new PB in the 10k during the Vancouver Sun Run, and a month later I sorta have a marathon to run. This ought to be fun.
Training Total: Swim 50.20k / Bike 823.42k / Run 99.21k + whatever I do after class today
