New City, New Routes, Same Problems

Well to start, I am still in a fair amount of pain. That being said I am trying to get through it.

I am still not traing a great deal, just enough to get by without a great deal of pain. I am doing about 5-6 hours a week right now and the pain seems to be subsiding, even though the epidural shot I recieved at the end of June did nothing to help. I am doing more and more stretching and a bit of yoga.

Ottawa is a great city filled with cool folks and a great tri community. A lot of the drivers are bit oo agressive for a guy thats been living the relaxed West Coast lifestyle. The roads are also a bit treacherous in parts due to the cold, I am guessing.

I have a few short routes laid out around my house and near my work and I will be mapping all of my workouts on mapmytri.com .

I have it in my head that I will be able to accomplish my Ironman goal by summer of 2009. This season it is looking like I will only be doing one race during the labour day weekend (somersault.ca).

I am thinking that with the IM USA just down the road about 3 or so hours, I will make that my goal. Next season I will count on doing at least one early season (June) Olympic distance and one Half Iron (again) in September, perhaps late August.

Til next time. And really I should be posting more often than this.

New Blog, New Training, New Pains

Well I have decided to stop posting on the milesnmiscues page and start a new one with all I would like to say about training and life in general.

For those that don't know I am Brian Boake, a sometimes triathlete, sometimes writer, Air Force man and all the time trying to be a good guy. I am also a new member of the 2007 Javelin Triathlon Team.

For the past year I have been recovering from a very bad back injury, wherein it is almost impossible to train, let alone race. I have a compression in the L5 and L4, with spinal stenosis with a splitting of the S1 nerve root causing bilateral pains within my legs. What does that mean? It means I am in pain almost the whole day and have tried just about everything.

I have decided to 'suck-up' the pain and start triathlon training again. Albeit this training will be a lot less than what I had been doing in the past. I am going to start out with 5-6 hours a week and by end of season possibly get up to 9 hours or so a week.

I will be attempting do this all while moving across Canada from Victoria to Ottawa with the whole family in the car for the trip.

What am I thinking?

I have gained a bit of weight back from my last years racing weight of about 195lbs and am up to 210lbs.

So that is first on the list. I have to start eating right again and walk more. Injury seems to be the root of laziness.

So, last week I really started back at training with 3X 1500m open water swims, 2X 20 min runs and one 30 min run. When I tried to go out on my trusty training bike for a ride, I discovered that I somehow broke my left STI shifter. So instead of freaking out, I took it as an opportunity to switch out my 9 speed kit for 10 speed and all is ready for this week.

I will try to do updates as often as possible and hopefully help or encourage someone else to get up and go.