A little background...

...on why I started this blog, what I'm doing with it, my goals and my previous experiences.

Around February/March of last year a friend of mine got the idea to sign up for and start training for an XTERRA off-road triathlon. I ran cross country in high school, and had recently gotten into XC mountain biking, so this definitely piqued my interest. We signed up and trained for 16 weeks leading up to the competition in June. When it came to training I made a plan but had a hard time sticking to it, and when race time came around it showed in the swimming event. It was a 1k open water swim(water was 56 deg) and I struggled. The mountain bike was next and I actually did OK, had a better time than my buddy. 20 miles of trail riding at 9000 in Buffalo Creek, CO is no cake walk, the best(worst) part is the 3 mile climb up a logging rode back to the transition area. The 5 mile trail run that was the final leg of the tri was brutal, I had lost my water bottle without realizing during the mountain bike race and was becoming seriously dehydrated. I felt like they made the course as tough as possible, literally running up and down the side of a mountain, and by the time I was coming down the home stretch my hamstrings were refusing to move as I asked them too. I limped across the finish line and collapsed. time = 3:50:21, 114Th out of 149 overall and 8Th of 10 in my AG.

Not bad, not great, most importantly, not last. Lots of lessons to take away from that race and decided I would train harder and come back next year and demolish my pathetic time. On February 27Th, 2008 that changed. While skiing at Big Sky in Bozeman, MT with some friends from back east I decided it would be a good idea to throw a backflip over a 25-30 drop. I had my landing picked out, the lip was perfect, perfect rotation, tight knees, then, uh oh, overrotated-thought I could ride it out-then the skis took a different direction without releasing and POP! There goes my ACL. We were on the backside of Loan Peak, this means it would take forever for Ski Patrol to get out there, and me being me, I said I could ride back down. Needless to say it popped again on the way down and I had to push my self on one ski all the way back to the front side of the mountain, that sucked.

4/7/2008 - ACL reconstruction surgery, using a new procedure, Dr. Seng removed part of my ITB(middle hamstring, back of the knee area) and put it in place of the damaged ACL. He drilled a hole in my Tibia and screwed down the new ligament, reattached my separated medial meniscus and shaved my MCL as that was sprained as well. This is a fairly new procedure and the worst part was recovering from the harvesting of my own hamstring that was used to replace the ACL. Doc says the knee will be stronger that ever will the right training and a little dedication.

9/7/2008 - 5 months out of surgery, itching to get back into something. Road biking to work everyday and rides on the weekends are not enough, then I find www.xterraplanet.com/winter/events.html and I am pumped. Training has begun and I will post a schedule soon, still making lots of changes to tailor the training specifically to this race.

So there ya have it, a brief overview with many more details to come in the future as we lead up to the Race, and of course photos and results afterwards. Let me know what your think, am I crazy? Is this something you might be thinking of? Do you have any training tips or suggestions? I'm all ears.