2013 Year in Review

I like to look back a  little at how my year of sporting activities went. I like to look for the highs and lows and hopefully use them to progress further the next year. I mean, part of the reason I keep this blog is to help me analyse things and improve. So let's get started.

Swimming: Well this one is easy. I did a minimal amount of work this past year, racking up a paltry 39 kms of swimming in total and swam slower in the one triathlon I did than the year before. So that about sums it up. Do less work, get worse results. No sense dwelling on this. This year, more swimming.

Cycling: 5400 km of cycling this year. Most of that was commuting and group rides, but I did manage to get a few great training rides in. Still, not enough of those rides were the quality I wanted. the cycling was great cross training for running and helped a lot when I hurt my hip. I also managed a few great rides in some of the multisport events I did, keeping my speed from last year. Still I would like to see that endurance increase and for this reason I will be working on the indoor trainer more frequently this year. I finally got an indoor trainer last year, a nice Louis Garneau model which is very simple, but I just need to use it better. Probably my best ride of the year was in the Greenwood Duathlon where I managed to have the fastest ride of the race. I rather liked that. I also did a lot of work on adjusting the bike to a better dutahlon/triathlon setup and thanks to Jeff and Sheldon at Sportwheels, we managed to do a pretty good job.

Running: 1575 km of running last year. We can start to see where my focus was. From the start of the year I knew it was going to be the year of my first marathon and I wanted to do it right. Thus the decreased focus on the other sports in my life. I just started with a new training regime based on heart rate thanks to Jeff Zahavich and the Kinesio Sport Lab and it was doing wonders for me. I pulled off my fastest half marathon by 6 minutes, I was running fast and strong. But June is also my busy month with duathlons and triathlons as well and as I kept racing hard and doing well, I also tried to keep up the higher mileage I thought I needed for the marathon in August. My mistake. Rest is super important, and races take their tole. So my hip went bad. I got it fixed, but not in time to run the marathon. I dropped to the half and still ran a great 1:27 in Iceland as the 19th fastest male. But I ran very little all summer as I rehabbed my injury. Live and learn. My numbers would have been so much higher if I had ran at all in July through the end of September, probably well over 2000 km for the year. I also took most of November off as a rest month. Not a bad idea at all. And I managed a few seconds and a first in the MEC race series, yay for me!

My plan is to come back with a marathon this year, though I will be aiming at the Fall so I can rest up a bit after May and June. I am also going to be much smarter with my strength and mobility regime, as well as seeing my team of healers (massage, chiro, PT) often during my heavy training months. I have some lofty goals again this year and if I play smart I think I can achieve them.

Multiports: Probably my best year yet, even though I wasn't able to get all the races in I wanted. I managed a best of 2 wins overall in duathlon and a 2nd place to take the points series championship for the first time. The shorter sprint distance events were my best as my speed in running was so great this year. I even managed to dip into a high 18 minute 5 km start for the Cyclesmith Duathlon.   After a long lay off, my overall endurance wasn't what I had wanted for the Riverport Duathlon, but I still managed a great time versus some heavy competition. I highly look forward to a few duathlons in the future as well.

I only did 1 triathlon this year and pulled off an Age Group win.  It was a slow swim, an okay bike ride and the run of my life, ha ha. Actually the run was mediocre as it was at this point in my year that my hip was starting to get bad. Thankfully I held together, but I hope next year to gt back to that race and give it a stronger go.

Even with the setbacks, the good far outweighed the bad from this years sporting endeavours. PBs in the half marathon, 5K, and duathlons, a new and smarter training regime, and a lot of new friends.

My main focus will still be running oriented I think, but I will use my need of cycling and swimming as a smart cross training and rest tool. Rest is the way to get faster overall, for if you are injured, well you can't really ruin fast. And I think I have proven that when I push too hard, too fast, my body finds a way to force the rest.