My last ITU race of the 2010 season is coming up this weekend with the PATCO Pan American Championship in Puerto Vallarta. I’m especially excited to race since it is a preview of next year’s Pan Am Games course, but not so excited to go to the country of Mexico. It could have been worse: had I also raced in this past weekend’s Huatulco World Cup it would have meant a massive 11 days in Mexico instead of my currently scheduled three day stay. It was sort of a gamble to skip Huatulco in terms of ranking points, but hopefully training/resting for PATCO champs will pay off.
Things are pretty quiet around the OTC lately as nearly everyone is racing in either Huatulco or Kona, or leaving to race in South Korea next weekend. I’m the only resident athlete left! The lack of distractions actually makes for some great training – I miss the swim squad in the mornings but other than that I can’t complain. It’s a good thing I have a Netflix account, though.
To pass the time I went up to Boulder for a workout with my coach Bobby. It consisted of hard bike intervals on the Computrainer followed by hard run intervals through the neighborhood, all while overdressing to simulate the heat of Mexico. It was a great workout but very unpleasant.
Training since Budapest has been evenly split between ITU focus and 70.3 focus. I went up to Denver after returning from Tuscaloosa and Todd Carver of Retul checked up on my TT position. Since then at least half of my rides are on the Ordu getting ready for the 56 mile ride in Clearwater.
At this time next week I will be hanging up my road bike until 2011!