AJ's Not so Everyday Blog

First off, if you have never been to St. Anthony's, GO! It has to be one of the most fun short course races out there. It's in a nice area with other things to do outside the race venue and the race is very well organized and done very professionally. Unfortunately leading up to the race my dad passed away and I caught the flu shortly after so I missed about three weeks of training which mentally and physical sucked. I was going to bail on the race but decided I needed to get back in the swing of things and it would be a good baseline on where I needed to work on some things heading into the three race Jax series. The weather for the weekend was near perfect, and made for a real enjoyable weekend. I was able to bring my buddy Dana and brother-in-law Marty down as Sherpa's for the weekend, we got down Saturday afternoon and got my bike checked in and swam about half of the Olympic course. Race morning was very chill and since I was the 19th swim wave I didn't really ...

Just sounded like a fun race, so we signed up to check it out. The weather was looking pretty bad as we were heading to the race and only got worse as we waited for it to start. I was already feeling a little under the weather but since we already paid for it I made sure we were going to run to earn our finisher wine glass. The bottom dropped out about .25 mile into the race and never let up. Ended up just being a miserable race and I just wanted to finished so I could go back home. Time: 22:48 4/34 Age Group 52/1070 Overall

My brother-in-law and his wife said they were signing up for this race so it was a no-brainer to tag along and have some fun. I'm much more of a morning workout type of person so this race being held at 4:30pm felt a little strange. I personally didn't really change much of my schedule leading up to the race since it was suppose to be more fun than anything. So I started my day with my scheduled 4 hour ride, ate a ton of food and took a nap, then got ready to head down to the race. It took us forever to get through St. Augustine, so much we almost missed packet pick up and pretty much eliminated any chance of a longer pre-race warm up. We were able to get a quick half mile jog in before we had to line up. The gun went off and I ran the first half mile pretty hard until the front was thinned out some and I wasn't tripping over everyone. I probably burned up a few too matches many running that hard at the start, oh well. I actually didn't feel to horrible during the run...

I did this race a couple years ago and had an awesome time and it was also my first half marathon so I figured I'd go back and see if I could improve my time while getting a little jump on triathlon season since it won't start for a couple more months. I was pretty excited heading into the race since I have been running a good bit all winter with weekly mileage ranging from 21-42 miles with a few 14-15 mile days in there. We drove down early Sunday morning, so I did my normal pre-race nutrition and headed down to the race. I got a my packet and did a nice and easy 20 minute warm up run in and headed to the start of the race, I ran a a 1:41:16 in training a month earlier so the plan was to break 1:40. They had a 1:40 pacer so I figured it would help with my pacing to run with him. The gun went off and we had a small group of five in our group and started clicking off miles. The first 5 miles went by really fast and I was feeling great, our pacer was a little hit and miss wit...

I have a Synergy Adrenaline wetsuit for sale. I bought it brand new last year and used it in two Olympic races. It's a size M1. Looks brand new still. Was $400 new, I'll let it go for $150.

Since the last race I've put much more running training in my schedule along with some very hard efforts on the bike. Due to work I wasn't able to get down as early as I wanted to the day before the race to get my packet and check my bike in so I had to do everything the morning of which didn't allow me to get any warm up in other than the one mile hike from parking to transition. The wind was insane the morning of the race coming straight off the ocean which meant we were going to have a direct head wind the first half of the bike course. With how the course was set up you weren't able to see the swim course until it was your wave to start and the walked you down a set of steps into the water. First couple steps into the water there were giant roots and the water was only waist deep. I was in the first wave of the Olympic+ distance but the fifth overall wave out. The course looked very short and I could see people standing at the turn buoy of half iron course (Yes! ...

Leading up to this race I had been putting in more running miles and open water swims so I was excited to see how if it was paying off or not. I had done this race last year as my first Olympic distance race ever and it was a real eye opener on the swim and run. The weather was great and the water was very warm. I felt the best at my last race when I ran and swam before the start so this time I did 20 minutes on the trainer, did a 10 minute run and swam to the first turn buoy (of the sprint course) before the race as a warm up. I think this helped tremendously! I stayed mid pack on the swim and kept what was a pretty relax pace for me. I made it to the first turn buoy and our small group of 10 was now only 3. My goggles started fogging really bad shortly after so I just kept someones feet right in front of me and used them as a guide since I couldn't see 20 yards in front of me. This was the first time I swam in a Swimskin and it was pretty awesome. I purchased a Roka Viper Elite...

This was my first time I've actually felt good throughout the entire race. This was the first time I've done a real warm up before a race and I think it really helped in the long run. The swim was pretty uneventful, this was my first ocean swim so I took it easier not really knowing what to except at the start. Got out of the water in 8th so I was excited to get on my bike and see what I could do being closer to the front. I made it through T1 pretty quick and passed another person in the process. The wind was blowing off the water so there was a slight cross wind for most of the race. I passed two people about 3 miles into the ride and another right before the turnaround. I stayed pretty close in my power window so I felt good and didn't feel like I burned up too many matches in the process. I made it back into T2 in 4th which I was really pumped about since there was only three other bikes in transition when I got back. Maybe one day I'll have that police escort b...

This one was a learning experience, One of my customers hooked me up with the entry to this after it was sold out because they were the the title sponsor. It was a bit weird doing a pool swim for the first time, they started with a time trial style start where you posted what you thought your ET would be for 300 yards. This is a problem, I would think if signed up for this thing in the first place you would have a roundabout on how fast you swim. I put in a pretty accurate swim based on my 300 sets from the pool. Long story short, the girl who put her time faster than mine and started in front of me was much slower than her estimated time. On the bike, things didn't get much better. I recently started training with power before this race so I had a game plan of staying around 220 watts and was almost perfect on that, finishing at a average of 218. The issue with this was, I purchased a new to me Bontrager disc and had gotten one 15 mile ride in on it the day before and everything s...

Over the last year I struck up a friendship with Nascar driver Josh Wise and have done a couple rides when he's in town for the Nascar races.  If you don't know who he is, I can sum it up pretty quick, he's a beast and a really strong triathlete. We met up at his condo down by Port Orange and decided to head north for 30 miles. Upon departure we both quickly realized it was going to be a fight going north due to crazy headwinds.  It was easily in the top three windiest rides I've done, other than that the weather was awesome and traffic wasn't too horrible. We did a easy 10 minute spin to get the legs warmed up then started into the wind trying to stay as aero as possible. We averaged a solid 19.5mph average to the turnaround in which was right at Marineland. On the way back he had already looked up a couple Strava segments so we figured we would try to do some Strava hunting and use the wind as much as we could. We averaged about 28.2mph on the way back to town and...

What a tough race. This was my first full on road race and what a course to make a debut on. Most people know that Florida is pretty flat for the most part until you get to Clermont. We have what I thought were some hills on one of our training routes but it was no where near the multitude of what we raced on. The local bike shop owner and the one I do most of my training rides during the week with, Tommy, thought it would be a good event to do since I'm a not so great climber. We also put more effort into lower cadence work and higher resistance trainer rides this winter to try and help me come triathlon season. The weather was really nice and in the high 60's at the start which was around 9:15am, we were the second wave and had about 110 in our wave. Since it was my first road race I had to run the Cat 5 class in which they combined the Cat 5 with the 35+ year old's. The race consisted of four 12 mile laps, it sounded like a pretty cool idea until you finish the first lap...

So after talking to a fellow triathlete over some Starbucks one evening I thought it'd be a good idea to start a blog to reflect on all the up's and down's, highlights and lowlights of everyday triathlon training and racing. Here goes nothing!