Since the Los Angeles Triathlon back in September I have mostly been focusing on school. I was the TA for an undergrad chemical engineering class Material And Energy Balances to fulfill a teaching requirement for my PhD...basically, I taught approximately a zillion office hours and since it is a weed out class for chemical engineers, a large number of people failed...random nightmare scenarios ensued.
I passed my yearly PhD evaluation and am on schedule to finish my PhD early (3.5 year range) which would be mildly inconvenient considering I have the perfect setup here in Boulder. For example:
I joined the local Flatirons Athletic Club at the end of last season so I would have a place to swim this winter. After last year's Collegiate season, I decided it was time to move on from the CU tri team. I had a pretty good season in 2012 as a first year pro and it seemed like the proper time to move on. Plus, it has been phenomenal to get away from the required practices and meetings and events of the team. For the first two years I lived in Colorado, the tri team was a great way to meet other CU students and train, but there were a growing number of reasons pushing me to move away as well. This fall I joined the team as usual but now as I am writing this email, I realize I havent been to a single practice all year. I didnt really mean to have a full exit from the collegiate scene but thats kinda how it has happened. The crazy thing is that I could theoretically race Collegiate Nationals 4 more years if I wanted to! (Already I have raced it 6x which seems rather absurd in itself).
Moving on from that is kinda weird. I feel all grown up. This will be the first year in the history of my triathlon career in which I havent had collegiate nationals in mid-April. Usually, I am still freezing my buns off and counting down the weeks till the biggest race of the year. This year I have the ability to really focus my year on the summer and not worry so much about early season racing.
Still, my first race is going to be mid-March at the Sarasota Pan Am Cup--an ITU draft legal style race. For those of you unfamiliar (like my mom), most of the races I do are non-drafting making it illegal to draft on the bike portion of the race. In the ITU format, drafting on the bike is legal and the dynamics of the race are enormously different. In these races, being a strong biker matters less and the race almost always comes down to the run since large packs form on the bike portion.
Anyway, for the time being I am continuing my swimming focus with 7-9 practices a week. The last two years my swimming has been pitifully slow during the school year being forced to swim at the CU rec center with simply not enough swimming per week with the CU team. Now, I am getting drowned by some freakin fast swimmers at FAC. I must say, I have never had more fun swimming than right now. I think swimming is the one discipline that most triathletes shy away from but I think there are some crucial aspects which can make it enjoyable:
1) Swimming outside: the pool I joined is outdoor year round! Yeah. In Boulder. What. There have been days with snow and 10 degrees and we are still outside swimming. (running from the locker room to the pool can be quite harrowing). Being Boulder, most days are at least sunny and I am surprisingly tan for January. Maybe its the added Vitamin D, the ability to look at the sky, no longer having the oppressively claustrophobic state of stagnant chlorine radiating from the walls of the dimly lit CU REC center and sucking your life out of the pores of your skin, or the sheer human appeal of the novelty of no longer being in the aforementioned situation, but whatever it is, swimming at FAC is flippin amazing.
2) Swimming with awesome masters coaches like Jane Scott. I dont know her too well really, but Jane is probably one of my favorite people. Jane coaches practices at all of the major swimming groups in Boulder and I go to a couple of her practices every week where she has absolutely no sympathy for complaining and dispassionately reels off marginally impossible sets while deriding softies with a wry sense of humor. "Why dont you try leaving 1/2 a second behind, I dont think you are drafting enough." She probably wouldnt work too well anywhere else besides Boulder...
3) Swimming with fast people. Really fast people. Like certain pro triathletes. Plus, to be honest, I have lived in Boulder for coming up on 3 years this summer and I am still awed by the people I work out with. When I first got into triathlons in 2006, these people were just names on websites. Now they know who I am. Which seems insane most days. Well, basically all days.
Anyway, besides that its winter time so trainer season is in full swing. Last year I set up the garage as a trainer studio and have a 32 inch TV a surround sound system and some motivational posters. And of course, I took this picture while watching a James Bond movie (staple of the rudy diet (Goldeneye in this case))...
It still surprises me how cold it can get when it gets cold here. Back home in Virginia we would get 'cold' days where it would get down to like 25. Here it gets easily below zero. These pictures are from a run on a day where the high was like 8 degrees. I wore a balaclava to make it easier to breathe and the snow you see is from my breath freezing! I even had icicles on my eyebrows which periodically would freeze shut.
Anyway, now that the season is approaching, I am starting to add in more biking and running workouts, plus as usual, there is more than enough work that needs to be done in lab. Recently I made some palladium thin films (I am not even going to bother explaining why because its probably boring anyway). But they looked kinda artsy and what can I say. I am a nerd I guess so I took pictures hhaha.
Oh yeah I I cant believe it but my I got an iPhone over Christmas. So now I can take pictures and document everything for the upcoming season! Hope you all are ready for some super thrilling shots of the inside of an airplane. The next post will be sooner than last....
Rudy
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