Its been over 2 months since Ironman Louisville on August 25th, and after enjoying a real nice off-season recovery period, its time to start thinking about next year. I’ve selected both of my major races for next year and signed up for one of them. The big race will be the inaugural Challenge Atlantic City iron-distance on June 29th, and the second will be Rev3 Pocono Mountain in September. I’m considering making a return appearance to the Wilkes-Barre Triathlon in mid-August since its actually a trip home for me, but i’m still thinking about it.

I considered these races because of what I learned in training for Ironman Louisville:

1. Find a race earlier in the summer. This is important because to train for a long distance race like this at the end of summer, will consume my entire summer. I look back on my so-called vacation from last year, and it wasn’t much of one because each day was 2-3 hours of training, with a 6+ hour workout on Fridays. I found I was so tired, we didn’t too much else.

2. Find a race closer to home. Traveling was brutal for a couple reasons, first, its expensive. I checked out the cost to travel to Louisville between airlines, hotels, cab rides, shipping my bike and gear and more. If I find races closer to home, I can drive myself and my bike to the race.

3. Don’t overdo the number of races. It really is not important how many races I do, as long as I get the chance to race. I find that this addiction isn’t about the race itself, but the experience of getting there. If I space out the races over the summer to get that rush often enough, it will keep me going.

So this week starts base training for my June race… yep, I said for my June race. I’ve already gotten comments about the insanity of the training for these, but base training is not really race training. I have some specific items I need to correct in my training, so the base training is the place to do it. I found during training this year that the real training doesn’t start until the final “peak” with 12 weeks to go. So I do 26 weeks of training to prepare for 12… but I know I need to.

My focus this off-season is:

1. Ensure I’m getting quality over quantity in training. My full schedule for training is actually less hours than last year but focuses more on specific areas in each workout. I found that most of my workouts last time were just “getting in the time” with no real focus. Even my swim workouts became routine.

2. I need to find a way to get strength training into my workouts, even if its only a little bit. I worry because I always get in this strength training mode early in base training and it falls off, but I’m hoping to keep it interesting enough to prove I can get it done.

3. Form, form, form while i’m swimming.

4. Train hard on the bike. I am looking to get a power meter and start power training for the bike over the winter. I’m investing in a new indoor training and everything. My bike times last year were awful, I know I need to do better.

So “MAYBE” I’ll keep my blog up to date this year, I guess we’ll see, but the journey to 2014 is underway, just 36 weeks to go.