Well I am almost done my first week of training with the C3 group . There as been many ups in downs. My swimming as been really good up until about Tuesday, my shoulders are sour! biking as been good to doing some much needed volume. My running was just starting to pick up but today we did a 1:10 min trial run but at 55mins i twisted my ankle really bad. I had to get all the way back to the truck and i was ways away form it! Thanks god Sean Bechtel and the crew waited for me...i was about 30mins late, they where all looking for me as if i was lost!

I am now going to forces on getting my ankle to 100%. I have had some good training and I am looking forward for an even better week next week.

Also wanted to say who ever wrote the comment on Connor Hammonds blog has no right to say that, He works hard and doesn't need that kinda of bull S***. This is something that needs to stop.

Karsten Madsen

Stuff

So I raced Muskoka and well who ever left that comment was right...I got smashed by Yorke (awesome swim and bike Andrew!!). I had an ok swim, but my bike was crap...that was the worst i have biked all year i am very disappointed in my bike. The run wasn't pretty, I just had nothing...all the long hard bricks did a number on me and my legs. I hope to have a better race in Guelph!

The other thing I wanted to talk about is my new Guru! My old one had a few problems so the great people from Guru http://www.gurubikes.com/enCA/main.php are fixing it and repainting the frame see the picture!

Swimming was great this morning.

12x 50m free 25 one arm

3x 350m on 6:00 1-3

200m easy back

4x 350m on 5:30 all hard

200m easy back

Karsten

pre Muskoka

I put in a hard week of training last week, I focused more on my running off the bike I as doing all my runs in the dead heat(like 34-35). I was doing long runs off the bike and I was doing shorter runs with hill repeats and 1km intervals. I also did a 5km tempo run after doing a hard mountain bike ride (very hard).

My legs are pretty tired so I only swam today. I was flying in the pool today opened the swim with a 1100m I felt strong, even when we did are IM set I didn't get dropped like I always do.

I am looking forward to the Muskoka sprint it's going to be the first triathlon of the year for me(if I can get on the bike with out a flat or something like that) I plane to swim a 10:00 for 750m and I think I can get a av speed of 38-39kmh on the bike. I will be on a draft set up for this race. In the run I want to go under 18:00 its a very hilly run...good for me because I love hills and I have been doing lots of them in the last 2 weeks!! I think this will be my last blog post till after Muskoka.

Also congrats to the Beijing mens Olympic Triathlon team
http://triathloncanada.com/en/newsdetails.ch2?uid=Home&newsarticle_id=2899

Karsten

Hard work!

Well things are back to normal in Kitchener my bad luck is all gone!! I have been putting down some good km this week. today was a really hard one.



30km bike 3xhill repeats



bricked into a 5km tempo 1km easy



Note it was 3o but when I didn't have the wind in my face it felt more like 40! I really hurt and now its rest time till my big swim in the morning tomorrow.

*nice job to the Juniors at Vancouver you did us proud! and good luck to the elites and u23!

The week from hell :(

Last week was the worst week I have had in a long time, I had a cold for the greater part of the week making training impossible. I had a bad feeling all week as if i was forgetting something, but it would never go away. I was on my way to western regional for 2000m steeple chase (or i thought i was) and it turns out we went to the wrong school making me late. We get to Western University where the track meet was but at 3:50. That no good for me because I was running at 3:50 so I got to watch the race. It was a pretty big blow but I was still ready for the race in Milton.

I was going in feeling pretty good but man the swim hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a crap start and lost Andrew Yorkes feet. My arms felt weak due to only swimming 3 times that week. but there was a good side to the swim. I ended up getting faster has the swim went one. I came out of the water with a time of 11:00 (750m) i was shooting for a 10:00 so I was not happy at all! As I mounted my bike I got a bit care less and dropped my bike shoes so thing where just not going my way at all by this point I figured that my bad luck would end, man was I wrong. I got a slow pinch flat and as I turned onto the main road my whole back end fish tailed out I just knew it was a flat. I got off my bike and set it down I just tried to make sense of what happened this week. I then started to walk bad to the transition area and every single person was looking at me but I didn't have to say anything, you could see the frustration on my face. I got back to the race site to take a closer look at my wheel and well with the luck I was having that week I ended up cracking it! My Zipp 808 rear are now being send back to Zipp to be fixed :( Its going to cost me $375 that I don't have!).

I guess this means no more bad luck for me I have had a year supply of bad luck in just one week!

by the way Nice job to Sean, Kyle and Andrew on there top 3 performances also big ups to James Lord on his top 5 finish, good work every one!

I am going to try and update more leading up to Muskoka!

Karsten Madsen