April 24, 2008

You never really know what to expect as a pro triathlete. Sometimes everything seems to be going wrong but then you realize you're actually doing pretty well. Other times, everything seems to be going along perfectly and then your fortunes change in an instant. My winter of training was a good illustration of both instances, and the moral of the story is that it's best to roll with both the good times and bad, and when things seem bad, they are bound to come around sooner or later.

The winter training started out pretty well in Incline Village, Nevada (on the north shore of Lake Tahoe), even as we were hit with a huge five-foot snowstorm and several other smaller snowstorms. I was cycling indoors on the trainer or rollers five or six days a week and driving down to lower elevations for long bike rides once a week.

As the winter progressed into March, I was getting sick of all the runs on the treadmill and all the rides on the rollers, and the high altitude here (6,400 feet) was beginning to really wear on me. I was having trouble putting in any kind of intensity or volume, and I wasn't recovering well, and I started to feel like my training was going poorly. Fortunately, my girlfriend Courtenay and I planned a 10-day trip to Santa Monica around the end of March into April, and it turned out to be a great experience for both of us. After a week packed with lots of good long workouts, I discovered that I was actually doing quite well with my preparation.

Greg starting the Latigo Climb in Santa Monica

Photo: Greg Remaly

The warm weather, 50 meter outdoor pool, and awesome routes to run and bike rejuvenated my body and mind, and I began to feel great. On one ride, I climbed up the eight-mile-long Latigo Canyon at threshold and posted my best time to date (29:10) by nearly a minute and my best threshold wattage by about 20 watts since I got my PowerTap last summer. That was really encouraging since my previous best up Latigo came in 2006, about 10 days after my third place at Wildflower, and about 10 days before I would win Memphis in May with a bike and overall course record. And my previous best threshold wattage came shortly before I won Scott Tinley's last year with a bike-course record.

I was a little more concerned about my swimming and running, seeing as how I had done very little intensity in either sport up to that point. But swimming in the long-course pool really helped strengthen and lengthen my freestyle stroke without even actively trying to do so, and running at sea-level outdoors (I had only run on the treadmill up to that point!) felt brilliantly good.

Our last full day in Santa Monica was my longest training day ever: a solid 75-minute swim in the 50-meter pool, a 4:45 long ride in the amazingly beautiful Santa Monica Mountains, followed by an hour run with a very good 25-minute tempo.

Besides the great training, another highlight of staying with my L.A. Triathlon host family was getting to take care of their two dogs and pot-bellied pig! I really loved the pig - he ate a salad for breakfast and one for dinner, but somehow he was still enormous!

Shortly after returning to Incline Village and getting back into our routine, I began noticing some pain in the ball of my right foot. It felt worse when I walked barefoot on hard surfaces, and I would feel it some running as well. It wasn't going away and, in fact, was getting worse, so I looked into the cause and discovered it was sesamoiditis. This condition is an inflammation of the tendons surrounding the sesamoids (two small bones in the ball of the feet) mostly likely brought on by the change in terrain, running speed, and intensity in Santa Monica, since I had only been doing slow treadmill running here leading up to the trip. Fortunately, I caught it early on so the sesamoids weren't fractured, which would've meant about six to eight weeks in a cast!

As it is, I have about two weeks of strict rest off of the ball of the right foot, so no running or cycling for a little while, but at least I can still swim and water-run. But it also means no St Anthony's or Wildflower Triathlons for me this year, which is a bit of a bummer because they are great races for me and my form is definitely very good this year. With some good rest, though, I should be ready to defend my title at the Columbia Triathlon in about three weeks, and I am looking forward to the great races I have lined up for the rest of the summer.