Practice Practice Practice

Today's ride will have to be written about tomorrow, there's plenty I want to write about, but work is in a few hours in Long Beach, so I'll at least insert the pictures in this post and then write about it tomorrow when I have some free time.

Robbie Grant, Kari Szentesi, and George Rivas.

Ben De La Torre

Leidy Vazquez

Yeshua Farfan working at Bike Religion

I'd like to start by saying that yesterdays bike ride was a blast. No matter who the company is, I love making it out for a group ride. Seven of us from the CSULB Triathlon Club team were able to head out for a ride down PCH, and luckily the weather was just about perfect for us. A bit of cloud cover kept the air chilly, but the roads were dry, clear, and mostly empty. Yesterdays ride took a little longer than expected; while riding from Long Beach to Jamboree was the goal, we had to cut it short in Newport to stop by Bike Religion.

Like the title suggests, I want this post to talk about practicing. Everyone that participates in triathlon at any level, like the collegiate athletes on our team and in our conference, the professionals, or the full time middle aged athletes have to find some way to balance the rest of their lives and their training. What tends to happen, at least in my case and in the case of some people I talk to about training, is that while training is very important to us, it sometimes takes the back burner way too easily.

As with the swimmers I coach, some of them are discovering how easy it can be to fall out of the flow of practice. Granted it's a little easier for some of them to get to practice because their parents force them to go, but it holds true with swimming as much as it does for triathlon: once you fall out of your training habits for too many days, it's hard to start back up. If my kids, or myself as an example, are practicing five nights a week, and all of a sudden sickness keeps them away for a week, it tends to take at least a week or a week and a half of training to get back in the swing of things.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make through all my rambling is that what I want to see from myself, my team mates, and the kids I train is consistency. Since I've started this blog, I've been very consistent in my riding. For the first week of 2011 my kids have been consistent in their training. My hope is that my team mates have been consistent in their training, and that my kids and I can maintain our consistency.

Hopefully today's second post will contain more organized thoughts. Looking forward to a interesting bike ride this afternoon.