back at it

I'm having trouble deciding right now if I want to do one more season worth of triathlon. I have some other goals that will put tri on the back burner for a while, and I just haven't figured out a timeline that I feel 100% committed to yet.

I think I'd like to train for Wildflower again I also had a friend remind me the other night that we'd been talking about doing the tri at Memphis in May next year.

I'm waffling.

In any case...I decided that just because I have not made a definite decision as to whether I'll be training for more races next spring, I can go ahead and get on with my off-season as if I WERE going to train for more races in the spring.

So...today. Back to strength training, this time with a specific focus on bring up absolute strength rather than muscle mass:

10 minute spin
Dynamic stretch
Specific warmup:

• Superset 1x3: Speed squat 6x55#/GH raise x8
• Superset 2x3: Speed squat 6x75#/Reverse hyperx12

Main set:

• Box squat to 3 rep max: 95, 115, 135, 155# (ROM started to suffer @ 155)
• Superset 3x3: Split squat 12x45#/Sumo squat 12x60#
• Superset 4x3: Diag. woodchop 12x50#/Leg raise x12

Then, I got my butt on the foam roller to work the IT bands a bit.

Everything felt pretty good. Hamstrings a little tight, left knee did okay. I've lost some strength in the past two years, but for it I gained endurance. Not so bad. I'd like to bring my max squat up to 200# by January. I'd also like to start cycling some Olympic lifting back in to work on flexbility and on fast twitch fibers in my lower body.

I also need to make sure I work in lots of single leg strength and stability work.

I'm such a different athlete than I was two years ago. I used to focus mainly on Olympic lifting and could regularly clean ank jerk 100#+. I used to love to speed squat and got up to 305#. I'm not so interested in that anymore, but I would like to be stronger than I am now...maybe somewhere in the middle.