Busy Tri Weekend

     I finally decided to take the time and set up an appointment to have my bike fit properly to me.  I have had QR for about 6 months and never took the time to do it.  When I was racing sprint and olympic distance tri's, I didn't really notice any uncomfortable feelings; however now that I have been spending 3 to 5 hours on the bike at a time, it was starting to hurt.  As it turns out, I should have done it along time ago,
     First, I found out that my left leg is 2cm shorter than my right.  To correct it, I had to have lifts put into my cleats.  Second, since I am duck footed, I had to have new pedals installed that allow me to pedal naturally instead of forcing my heels out and causing discomfort. The last big thing was that my shoes were to narrow and long, so I purchased new shoes.  I rode it for a couple of hours after the fit, and everything added up to pure magic.  The fit was definitely worth it.  
     At the tri store where I received my bike fit, they have tri club and it turned out the club had a busy weekend of events.  I decided to check them out as well.  The first event was a seminar on how to determine and improve your tri weaknesses.  I would probably have skipped this lecture, but my wallet fell out of my pocket at home and I had to go hoe and come back in order to pay for all of my new goodies and get QR back (they held her ransom while I was gone).
     The lecture did turn out well.  I came home and broke out all of the tri's I ran last year and calculated the percentage of improvement necessary to beat the winner in my age group. Surprise, surprise, my weakness is running.  If I wanted to be more competitive, I would need to raise my run times by 30%.  My swim and bike times are within 10% of the leaders on average, so I see lots of practice in my future.
     The speaker also discussed setting goals and benchmarks so you can judge how your season is going.  I pretty much already do this; I set goals for the season and each race.  At this point it is to always improve and not get burned out.  The main goal for this season is completing Ironman St. George.
     The club also had a swim clinic this afternoon, so I popped into it.  I am really glad I went to this. I finally learned how to kick correctly; however it wares me out faster so I have to relearn my whole stroke and find patience and relaxation in my swimming. We did a lot of drills that focused on body position in the water to go along with the kick, so that was nice.
     I also learned how to back stroke.  In the Marines they teach the elementary backstroke so I wasn't sure how to swim the correct backstroke and I always avoided it to avoid looking silly.  Now I know how to do it, but I still look silly so I may hold off on future back stroke training.  My side stroke is fast and I prefer to do this when I need to alternate strokes anyways.  I have always been curious why backstroke is always the second stroke and not side, who knows.
     The last thing I learned how to do was flip turn.  I have screwed around with this in the past but I am always to far away or panic and quit trying. After doing it 10-15 times, I am confident I will start utilizing flip turns in my training.  It will make me look that more bad ass.
     After the swim, I returned to my rec center to take on my long run (I said it was  busy weekend).  With a snow storm in full effect I didn't think it would be a great idea to run outside, so I chose mind numbing circles instead.  I was scheduled to run for 1:50 but only ran for 1:10.  My left knee started to ache, maybe because it is shorter, and I didn't want to continue and risk impeding other training events this week.  I think I am going to go shoe shopping tomorrow and see if I can pick something up to help alleviate the fact that I am a freak.

Training this weekend:
Bike: 2hrs
Swim:1000m
Run: 1:10