This week was the week leading up to the Half Vineman 70.3 race in Sonoma County, CA. For those of you unfamiliar with the 70.3 term, it was coined last year by the World Triathlon Corporation (owners and operators of the Ford Ironman World Championship and governing body of all of the qualifying events) to distinguish what was previously known as the “half ironman” distance as its own entity. As it is for all Ironman Hawaii qualifiers, the competition at this race is stiff, both for pros and age groupers. Some say it is the most competitive 70.3 race in North America. In addition to this, there is only about one third of the qualifying slots available as a full ironman event, making the Hawaii spots few and far between. This is why this race was my key race for the season. Not necessarily because I felt I could qualify, but to test myself against the best there is out there.

Being a week before a race, I took things pretty easy. Sunday included a 2-mile ocean swim and a 1-hour run, a day off Monday, and then just some short runs and bikes with a few pick-ups the rest of the week. Friday was also a day off with some short running and biking with a few pick-ups on Saturday. All of this worked out pretty well, as I have been pretty busy at the office lately. I am finishing my Sports Medicine Fellowship (orthopedic surgery) at the Southern California Institute in Los Angeles and preparing to move to Portland in less than a month. So, not only do I have a lot of work to do to finish my research projects at work, there is plenty of work to do for the move.

As for the race, the swim was predictably mediocre as my swim training has been a bit lackluster to say the least. The bike, however, was a different story. Being from the Midwest, I have been treated to some great bike training in the Santa Monica Mountains for the past year. A past time I hope to continue in Oregon. Because of my confidence in my biking ability, I let it rip and did pretty well. Unfortunately, this resulted in a bit of difficulty on the run. Despite using a ton of salt pills, gels and Gatorade, I still fought off cramps on the run (a few more high intensity workouts/races would have helped, I think). Overall, I was pretty pleased though. I finished in 4:33 for the 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run. That put me in 16 th place out of about 300 in the men’s 30-34 age group. Not bad, but not exactly Kona quality for this year. I guess we can’t go every year, maybe next year.

The good news of not competing in the Ironman Hawaii is that it will free my schedule to train for the Portland Marathon. Over the next 10 weeks I’ll be writing a weekly blog about my training as an everyday amateur with a day job. I will try to answer some common training questions along the way from an Orthopedic Sports Medicine perspective.