2007 Recap

After signing up for a sprint tri on a whim in june of 2006, suffering my way to a 5:45 half Ironman that fall and signing up for IM Wisconsin in 2007 I was really looking forward to 2007 as my first full season of triathlon.

2007 started out on the wrong foot, literally. On an easy recovery week run in late December or early January I started to get a sore pain in my right heel. By the end of the run and later that day I could hardly walk, and a week later I was diagnosed with a mild tear at the insertion of my right achilles. I took it easy, lots of water jogging and elepticals January through March, and started running again after a couple of months. But the heel was never 100% last year and as a result it hampered my already limited running all year.

Regardless I did a few races and improved my fitness. During this time I was also part of a group coached program building up to IM Wisconsin in Sept of 2007. This would be my first full IM, and first marathon too.

Some of the highlights/results from 2007 were:

April 2007 - 25th out of 174 in a 20k time trial. Avg speed was 25.13, which considering up to that point I had done nothing but base work on the bike was pretty cool.

June 2007-16th out of 131 in an olympic triathlon. Time was 2:12. Had the 13th fastest bike split and was suffering from a stomach flu at the time so I know I could have gone faster.

July 2007- 5:17 in the Mountaineer half ironaman in Morgantown WV. A 28 minute swim, 2:40 bike on a hilly course and a good first half of the run until lack of run miles caught up to me. A 30 minute improvement from my previous half ironman time from the previous year.

July 2007-Quad Games bike tt, 20k on a rolling course, 11th out of 396 participants, 24.93 mph at the end of a tough week of training.

September 2007, IM Wisconsin, 11:45. 497 out of 2,209. Good swim (1:03), decent bike (5:50) but the lack of long runs and overall lack of running miles limited me to a 4:35 marathon.

Signed up for IMWI 2008 the next day. Took a month off and then was reading a race report from a guy on Slowtwitch.com that actually ended up finishing 3 seconds ahead of me at IMWI. In his report he praised his coach, John Hirsch. After checking out his coach's website I decided to contact John about coaching. After a lengthy phone call I decided this guy was the real deal and really seemed to care about his athletes and then signed up for his CREW.

After a pretty easy October John and I decided on a winter run focus that would culminate in a spring marathon. My training plan as laid out by John can be seen here.