Wildflower, Reno, Saratoga Duathlon

The anticipation of this month nearly killed me this winter, but May has arrived and the 2018 race season is underway.

At the beginning of the month, I ventured out to California for the reborn Wildflower Triathlon. This event took place 30 years ago, and continued until droughts and declining registration brought an end to it last season. Anybody who follows long course triathlon knew this was the loss of more than just one event, but an icon, and the ultimate platform from which so many great professional triathletes have launched their careers. When the lake filled up again and they decided to bring the race back, I knew I had to be there.

The “Woodstock of Triathlon” did not disappoint. Race day brought intense desert heat, maxing out at about 90, but a balmy water temperature of 65. The glare from the morning sun was brutal to the first turn buoy, and I was quickly spit out from the front group, strung out in no man’s land. Nevertheless, my swim was one of my best in years, 27:46, which got me out of the water square in the middle of the field. Shoutout to Finding Freestyle for getting my swim back on track! Hopefully this is the first step to consistently being down under 27. The bike course came with the blessing of low winds, but the terrain made “fast” bike splits hard to come by. After going back and forth with a few other racers, I came in with a split of 2:26, right around the same position as after the swim. Frankly, I wasn’t ready for that run. Despite really seeing big improvements on my road times this winter and spring, including personal bests from 5k up to the half marathon, the hiking trails and sandy ground was too much for my legs and I cracked hard. Honestly, I would have been better off training for this run by snowshoeing than my 60 mile weeks on the roads! Live and learn. Overall this was probably one of the best courses I’ve ever raced on. If you want to brag about your huge PR for likes on your Instagram, look elsewhere. If you want to really challenge yourself on a tough course against a deep and competitive field, you have to come to Wildflower. I will be back next season to try and improve my time there for sure.

After my weekend in California, I drove east to one of my favorite places, Reno. My sister and brother in law have been living there for 4 years, and one of my closest friends, Eric, just moved there this past winter, so this trip was a great chance to see some friends in family. If I didn’t love living in Saratoga county back in New York, Reno would quickly be my next choice of places to live. The place sits at 4-5000 feet, so there’s a little bit of altitude to train at. Lake Tahoe is just on the other side of the mountain. The desert climate gives Reno over 300 days of sunshine per year, which is a stark contrast to the wet (but green!) upstate New York. Needless to say, if I never live in Nevada, it will still be one of my favorite places to visit.

A return flight to New York marked the end of a great trip. Once home, training took a backseat while yard work and home maintenance had to be caught up on. But make no mistake, I kept most of the fitness built up over the winter and spring, and at the end of May, got to use it at great local race, the Saratoga Duathlon. For the first time since 2013, I knew I couldn’t win this race by a large margin. In fact, a win wasn’t guaranteed at all, with local up and comer Nick Marcantonio on the start line. He was a quick college runner, and is now taking triathlon and duathlon by storm. Watch out for this one. I had no delusions about being able to outrun him, and he took a 40 second lead through the first 5k run. Once we got onto the bike course, I put my head down and pedalled my face off the close that gap down. Knowing that my only chance to keep the win streak alive was to get some time on the bike, I threw everything I had at him. 400 watts here, 350 there, but nothing stuck. At the end of the bike course he was meters behind, and once we were on the run course it only took about 400 meters for the elastic to snap. He ran away and won, while I had to settle for second.

I think this marks an end of an era of local race domination. It felt great to be on top, but honestly I’m more excited for what is to come. When Eric was living with me in Bennington, we were pushing each other on weekly basis, and there’s no doubt we both gained a lot from it. At the USAT Age Group Sprint National Championship, he was the fastest athlete in the 30-34 group. Am I disappointed in losing a race I’ve won in three previous attempts? Of course. But I completed the course almost 3 minutes faster than last year (which at the time was a course record), set a new bike course record, matched my all-time best 20 minute power, and race my fastest duathlon splits. I might have lost the title, but I got so much more out of that race than I would have in a lonely TT with a 10 minute winning margin. Competition brings the best out of us.

June is coming up quick. Triathlon season is in full swing. My next professional race will be the New York City Triathlon on July 1st. Until then you can catch me at some of the local races, particularly looking forward to the Great Sacandaga Challenge. You also might find me training, looking to get a lot of threshold work in before the upcoming olympic distance race. Thanks for reading!

Build Towards Wildflower, a 500 Freestyle and a 5 Mile Road Race

It has been a cold Spring here in Saratoga, but I didn’t let that slow me down. This month has been fun but exhausting, with training peaking with a 22 hour training week. Cycling volume has gone up appropriately, while I’ve been able to more or less maintain the great progress made this winter in swimming and running.

At the beginning of April, the Monument Masters swim team in Bennington hosted their annual open meet. It was great to get to the pool to see some old training friends and kids I used to coach. It was time to hop up on the blocks for some fast pool swims. There were relays and sprints, but my focus was on swimming the fastest 500 freestyle possible. The previous year, I swam the event in 5:59, so the goal was to lower that mark. I dove in, put my head down, and worked as hard as I could. The opening hundred split was 1:05, then I settled into a great rhythm at 1:11-12 for the remaining splits. I touched the wall in 5:52, and couldn’t be happier with the result. Even amidst the heavy cycling, the work done with Dave Luscan’s Finding Freestyle program had paid off and I was swimming my fastest since leaving college. My best 1.2 mile wetsuit swim is 26 minutes in 2015, and this swim restored my faith in my ability to match that or swim even quicker the triathlon season.

The Delmar Dash, a fast and flat 5 mile road race, took place in the middle of the month. The timing was awful, with training volume being highest in the build up to Wildflower. The day before the race included 3.5 hours on the bike, a short run, and a short swim, so when I got up to run on Sunday morning, I thought there was no way I’d be able to get the kind of run out of my legs that I wanted. Surprise! The legs went, my fastest mile was 5:27, and slowest was 5:38. I hit the 5k point in 17:06, a new personal best, but more work to do! I held onto the guys I was running with for as long as possible, but they had much better kicks in that last half mile and left me in the dust. When I crossed the line in 28:02 though, I had nothing to complain about. It was a 30+ second personal best for 5 miles! Just goes to show you, when you feel slow and sluggish, that doesn’t mean you have to be slow and sluggish.

Confidence has been inspired, and just in time for the first triathlon of the season. This Thursday I will fly out to California for the Wildflower Triathlon, and I couldn’t be more excited. My last bike workout featured 3 x 30 minute intervals on 3 minutes rest, and 270 watts never felt easier. I don’t need that sort of power on the 56 mile course, but I’m confident that I can hold 240-50 and come off the bike with some good running legs. I cannot wait to tell you all how this race goes, so keep your eyes peeled for an update on Facebook (Tim Russell Pro Triathlete) or Instagram (@timbikerun). Thanks for reading and enjoy the warming weather!

My Experience with a Caffeine Cleanse

March has been another good month here in upstate New York. Snow is melting away. Temperatures are rising. We might still bundle up a little, but the shift of seasons spells more and better quality training. It has been largely uneventful, but in a good way. My cats, my fiance, and I have all settled into our routines. So really, there isn’t much to say about training this month. The time is being put in, swimming about 12-15000 per week, cycling 10 hours and up, and running right around 40 miles. But numbers are boring!

In this month’s blog, I will be describing my experience of going from 5-6 cups of coffee each day to a green tea drinker with much more stable energy throughout the day.

The decision to change my caffeine habits was made in November. At that point a normal day started with two cups of coffee. Then, after my first workout of the day, a delicious protein shake… with coffee concentrate added (Not making this up!). Most days only included two training sessions this time of year, so now I could have lunch, with another cup of coffee. Then after my last workout, no more coffee, but as much green tea as needed to stay awake and do anything. And let’s not forget that some workouts require extra energy as well, which included energy gels and Coca-Cola mid-training. It wouldn’t surprise me if I had consumed over 1000 milligrams on some days.

That was enough. Beside the fact that I could have been doing serious damage to my body, the benefits of caffeine weren’t even really there. Sure, it was helpful for waking me up in the morning, but after that early “jolt” of energy, the rest of the day felt like trying to keep a sinking ship afloat.

So I penciled in a five days with only green tea, figuring that would help my body recalibrate, and then get back to a healthy relationship with coffee, with one cup in the morning then switching to green tea for the afternoon. My first two days were miserable. The headaches were excruciating, and I had no idea a person could feel so exhausted! I did not train during these first two days, and they were still beyond exhausting. Day three came and I felt a bit better. Four and Five felt butter smooth. I had done it! It felt so great to have steady energy throughout the day that I didn’t even want to return to being a cup-a-day coffee drinker.

Four months later I’m still only drinking green tea, with the exception coffee on race mornings (just a few running races so far) or a Coke mini during a longer bike ride. The energy boost from the extra caffeine on race mornings is noticeable, and so far the race results have been good. All in all, I’d rather give up the small caffeine boost for day to day training in exchange for a race day advantage, so I’m going to keep this going.

That’s about it for this installment. Next weekend is the master’s swim meet in back Bennington Vermont. Last year I swam a 5:59 for the 500. I’m excited to see how my time compares after finishing the 12-week Finding Freestyle course. Same event, same pool, and same suit means it will be the best apples to apples comparison on the effectiveness of a very different approach to swim training.

My race calendar is still in flux, but I’m excited to announce that my first race this season will be the Wildflower Triathlon. This event is an icon in long distance racing, and seeing it covered in the documentary What It Takes back in college inspired my professional racing aspirations. Last season the race was canceled due to lack of water at the swim venue, and I was crushed that I never got to race this bucket-lister. When it was announced that there had been enough rain last Fall and the race was back on, I knew I had to be there. Beyond excited and just cannot wait to get there. Thanks for reading, and if you are going to Wildflower, send me a message!

Winter Running, The Olympics, Politics (Sorry), and a Major Life Milestone

Winter in Upstate New York sucks for triathlon training. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, but snow and cold are not unbeatable obstacles. Because cycling is my best discipline in triathlon, and because the roads are so difficult to ride on when there’s snow and salt, I took a little time to establish some running base miles, work on technical swimming, and got on the bike trainer sparingly these past three months. A few 50 mile running weeks has laid a solid foundation, and hopefully that strength will stay in my legs throughout the entire competitive season.

In my last post, I promised a 3000 meter time. 9:54. Safe to say there are no Olympic track meets in my future, but it was fun to race at a very different pace, and I hope that leg speed will be something I can call on in critical race moments in triathlon. I also finished off the Hudson Mohawk Road Runners Club Winter series. The final race was a 10 miler, the near perfect distance to estimate my threshold running pace. My time there was 59:47, putting my threshold right under that 6 minute mile pace. This is really exciting, because that’s only a little quicker than the pace I would like to be running off the bike for a half-marathon this season. On track in February!

If you’ve read my older blogs, it won’t surprise you to hear that I spent a good portion of this month watching the Winter Olympics in South Korea. The best athletes in the world are so much fun to watch, especially in sports that don’t get as much coverage on mainstream media. Of course I enjoy watching the Olympic hockey tournaments, but it’s so exciting to watch cross-country skiing, alpine skiing, aerials, speed skating, snowboarding, and one of my favorites, biathlon. I’m always so impressed by a biathlete’s ability to ski powerfully, then quiet themselves and perform precisely on the shooting range. However, my favorite moments of these Olympics definitely came from the hockey tournaments. The USA women winning gold against Canada in a shootout, with Jocelyne Lamoureux’s incredible move to score the game winner. I don’t think a gold medal game should be decided in a shootout, but I have to admit I was happy about the outcome of this one. The other incredible result in hockey was the German men’s team, who didn’t even qualify for the games in Sochi and had never won an Olympic medal, managed to upset both Sweden and Canada to advance to the Gold medal game. They left with a silver after losing to the “Olympic athletes from Russia.” I could give my opinions on the slap-on-the-wrist punishment for a state sponsored doping program all day. Instead I will give the short opinion- this does nothing to deter others from cheating and basically says the IOC doesn’t want to know anything, in hopes to avoid dealing with scandal. Other than their men taking home a gold medal, the results of the tournament were great, with a breakout performance from the German men and one for the books with the women of team USA.

I generally try to keep my blog light-hearted, but there’s one issue we are facing in the United States that I feel compelled to speak about. In the last 50 years we have lost 1.5 million lives to gun violence, and a recent school shooting in Florida has brought the topic into the limelight. The issue of gun control is divisive here in the US. While laws limiting the types of firearms available and who can purchase them are an obvious solution, we have a second amendment to our constitution which suggests we have the right to bear arms to defend ourselves, and the government cannot take that away. I’ll keep my opinion brief, but open to conversation. Assault weapons should not be legal on the streets in any first-world nation. If you need to defend yourself with a firearm, feel free to do so with an 8-bullet handgun. Assault weapons were not built for anything other than mowing down as many people as possible, and they have been the gun of choice for too many mass shootings. Let me reiterate, I don’t want to take away anybody’s right to defend themselves with a self-defense gun, but nobody needs an assault weapon that can kill 40 or more people per minute, and we as a society have proven that having these things out there isn’t a right worth the extra life lost. No, we cannot stop all shootings, but limiting the availability of the AR-15 could have saved a whole lot of life in these shootings. Let me acknowledge the irony of how much I enjoy biathlon and my support for gun control. I do believe that firearms can be used safely and responsibly! I have friends and family on both sides of this debate, and considered leaving it out of this blog to not ruffle any feathers. My opinion is not the most popular here in upstate New York. Nonetheless, I felt morally obligated to speak my mind on this, in hopes of directing my country in a better trajectory.

Last topic of this blog post, and it is a big one. Last September, I became engaged to my best friend of the last decade, Annie Wu. We met in college, and I am so grateful that someday I will call her my wife. We expect to be tying the knot in June of 2019. I’ve always raced better when she has been a part of my life, and I can only expect that being that much closer to her is going to help me bring myself to starting lines stronger and healthier than ever.

I could go on about my amazing fiancé all day, but the two of us have come to appreciate our privacy, hence a greatly reduced social media presence. So I will leave it at that. In next month’s blog post, I will hopefully have my race calendar together, I will have finished the first 12-week course in Dave Luscan’s Finding Freestyle program, and I will be one month closer to the start of race season. Thanks for reading!

Back to Blogging for the 2018 Triathlon Season

I love triathlon. Ever since the first time I dragged myself across a lake, hopped on a borrowed bike, and made it through a run course, there has been no obsession as persistent in my brain than trying to shave time, improve efficiency, and simply be better at this sport.

My progression has been from a casual back-of-the-packer, to quick college kid, to the biggest fish in a very small pond, to Kona qualifier, to an elite license holding triathlete, which is where you will find me now. This gives me a unique opportunity to truly empathize with virtually every type of person you will meet at a triathlon, having been at both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between.

New Year’s resolutions are just a little bit tacky and overdone, let’s be honest. This makes it a little embarrassing to admit that this blog is a byproduct of one of my own New Year’s resolution- To document the 2018 season. Blogging serves as an excellent motivator. As I learned in 2013, writing and sharing my story with the world (Ok let’s be real, some of my family and friends) provides an extra layer of accountability. Frankly, I have been embarrassed and downright ashamed of my race results from the last several race seasons. For some reason, my assumption was that you start with great results, then share. In really, it is usually the exact opposite. Put yourself out there, then fight every day for success, plain in sight for all to see. This season I’m putting myself out there again, and aiming to post to this blog once per month, near the end of each month.

I have a second New Year’s resolution, also triathlon related- to race locally more often. The more time I spend at major triathlon events, the greater my appreciation for the low-key local events. In December I moved back to Saratoga County, New York, which makes me eager to fulfill this resolution. Memories of racing here are some of my fondest. I’m not saying I won’t compete in major professional races this summer, but I’m not going to skip out on great experiences close to home.

But to make 2018 a season like no other, I have to try new things. Change is how new results happen, right? To break out of a swimming slump, I’m now being coached by David Luscan, owner and founder of Finding Freestyle, a first class freestyle curriculum that teaches you to swim the way you teach a language. Rather than just tell you what you’re doing wrong, the program points you in a direction and lets you find the right way to swim freestyle yourself. It has been an incredibly mindful and enlightening way to swim, and I’m only on week 4 of the 12 week course! Highly recommend it. David has helped some very competent professional athletes improve, and countless beginners as well. Check out his website if you want to get faster on less than 10,000 yards per week.

Another change I’m experimenting with this winter is running a lot more. The Hudson Mohawk Road Runners Club in Albany provides regular opportunities to test my fitness, with a variety of distance races throughout their winter series. I’ve already been able to run personal bests in 15k and half-marathon runs. Running 5k and other races frequently in college quickly transformed me from a guy who could barely run an 8 minute mile into an 18-minute 5k runner, and I’m looking for that same speed/endurance increase again by racing hard more often. I’m also getting way out of my comfort zone and trying some indoor track meets, primarily focusing on the 3000 meter distance. The winter is a great time to try new things and improve your weaknesses, with the bulk of the triathlon season still months away.

It hasn’t been all work though. The occasional playtime has to find its way into your routine, and for me that means grabbing a stick and pucks, tying up the skates, and hitting the ice. As a kid, there was nothing better in the winter than flooding our backyard in Vermont and playing a little hockey, and this is still to this day something that brings me more bliss than any other sport. It’s a shame no talent for hockey ever manifested! I’ve found time to get to the beautiful outdoor ice sheet at Saratoga Spa State Park twice this winter, and the hours just melt slapping a puck around.

Because I haven’t blogged in so long, there is much to tell. My life has changed dramatically since Kona 2014, but allow me to share in bits and pieces. In my next post in February, I plan on sharing my 2018 race schedule, revealing my 3000 meter time (whether terrific or embarrassing!), and hopefully telling you how much faster David Luscan is making me swim. Until then, I’ll be training and cuddling with my favorite cats in my favorite place to call home. Thank you for reading!