2017 by the numbers

2017 was without a doubt my best year of athletic achievement to date. Three overall triathlon wins and a course record, an 8th place AG finish at the 70.3 World championship, and my first full ironman finish (9:01), a race that earned me a trip to Kona 2018. Needless to say I'm left with some pretty big shoes to fill in 2018. In an attempt to learn from this past year I have spent some time compiling my training data (shout-out to Strava). For those interested, here is a look at the anatomy of my 2017 season:

Cumulative Summary

     Bike:

4,740 miles

289h38m

191 rides 

Longest ride: 112 (Aug 6th)

*Many of these rides were on the trainer (0 miles) so average pace could not be calculated

   Run:

1,507 miles

175h56m

228 runs

Avg run distance: 6.5 miles

Avg run pace: 7:02 min/mile

Longest run: 26 miles (Louisville)

   Swim:

475,883yd (270 miles)

120h27m

141 swims 

Avg swim distance: 3300y

Longest swim: 10,000m (Dec 30^th)

   Totals

6516 miles

586h (24.4 days or 6.6% of the year)

Monthly training snapshot

January: ~52 hours – 1 day off

February: ~41 hours – 3 days off

March: ~50 hours – 2 days off

April: ~52 hours – 1 day off

May: ~50 hours – 3 days off

June: ~53 hours – 4 days off

July: ~56 hours – 4 days off

August: ~67 hours – 1 day off

September: ~52 hours – 6 days off

October: ~38 hours – 11 days off

November: ~34 hours – 1 day off

December: ~41 hours – 3 days off

Mean monthly: ~49h

Median monthly: 51h

Days off: 40

Weekly training snapshot

Mean weekly hours: 11h15m

Peak week: 17h55m (Aug 14-20^th)

Low week: 0h (thats right, a whole week of no training!)

Races:

Sprints: 2x (2 wins)

Olympics: 0

70.3: 3x (1 win)

140.6: 1x

5k: 1x (16:40)*hungover and in pajamas

4-miler: 1x (21:24)

USA triathlon national ranking: 3rd (25-29y male)

A lot of really cool numbers (if you're into things like that)! So why was this past year different and what can I learn?

1. CONSISTENCY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF BEING A TRIATHLETE. The two BIGGEST CHANGES I made in the past year was that I took MORE DAYS OFF AND I RAN SLOWER. This started with a New Years resolution I made January 1st to do the vast majority of my runs with a heart rate of less than 150 bpm. At first it sucked and was frustrating and many of my runs I felt like I was walking. Slowly but surely though I became more efficient and there were a few runs I was able to sneak under 7 min per mile keeping my heart rate low.

2. THE TRAINER SUCKS BUT IT MAKES YOU FAST. Boston is cool, there is lots of great food and beer. Riding the trainer when its 75 degrees out and sunny because you dont have time to spend an hour getting out of the city sucks. That said, riding the trainer makes you fast. Period. My normalized power at IM Louisville was 225 watts (strava file here). This is only 3 watts less than I held at my first 70.3 (Muncie in 2013). The biggest difference was that before Louisville Bri and I were doing a lot of traveling, forcing me to do some pretty ridiculous early morning trainer sessions. Probably the "best" of which was a 4h session commencing at 4:30am before a day of work (file here).

3. IF YOU WANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL, FIND GOOD TRAINING PARTNERS....AND A WIFE THAT WON'T KILL YOU FOR SPENDING 12H A WEEK TRAINING. Motivation waxes and wanes, theres no denying it. But when the alarm goes off at 5am its harder to snooze when you have training partners to hold you responsible. Thank you Richard Fineman (blog here), Corey Robinson, and Mike Hoffman. Find yourself some good reliable training partners. Oh, and make sure your wife won't kill you for having an alarm that goes off at 5am. Bonus points if she can cook.

Finally, I'd be amiss if I failed to mention how great its been to race for Team Every Man Jack the past three years. My teammates are a constant source of inspiration and are always willing to help out in any way they can. The sponsors we have are incredible and I wouldn't be where I am without their support. I am super pumped to be racing for Team Every Man Jack again in 2018. Big shoes to fill indeed, time to start training.