This year was the start of a lot of new things for me.

First was the start of a new coaching venture - after obtaining my personal trainer and club coaching cert I started assisting in the triclub bike training sessions.

Starting with base building in January, migrating to skills sessions, pre-race season sessions, and finally into the thick of racing, we built and tuned the workouts to optomize performance for the triclub athletes. I had no idea it would be optimizing my performance as well.

SJIT is my benchmark of fitness. It's the 5k TT for my adventure racing season. It's the gauge to tell me if I'm on track or if I need to work on a few things. This year provided me a lot of info.

My swim hasn't changed much. I know if I want to improve there, I should probably start hitting the pool.

The run showed a decline in performance. I need to hit the trails more consistently and get those interval workouts in once a week. I haven't been doing that.

What ultimately surprised me was the bike. Holy cow. I forgot to bring my bike computer on the race course. It was akin to using the Obi Wan Kenobi blast shield training. I had no idea how fast I was going. I just had to trust my rate of perceived effort.

A full 2 1/2 miles an hour faster than last year's average! That alone was enough to counter the mediocre swim and lame run. I was ecstatic. In fact, it's still there. An innner 'YES!' kicks off everytime I think about it.

Apparently consistent, focused training does work.

Very cool.