Marvelous Manatees - Stronger than Ever! (Page 3)

So far, we have the following returning Manatees:

• Jen
• Ann-Marie
• Leanne
• Melanie
• Anne (bio to come)
• Randee (bio to come)
• Robin
• Karen
• Chris

I have not heard back from Jason, Robin K-C, or Lisa. 

Jim mentioned that Michelle's mother passed away last week.  Please send your condolences. I expect he will find us soon.

Welcome back, Marysia!

NAME: Curtis

OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA: Strava

STORY: I joined BT in January of 2015 right after I committed to do the hometown 70.3 I had been thinking about doing for 3-4 months.  My first Mentor group was Jim Kelley's (Birkierunner) General and Long Course Group.  I bounced around mentor Groups for a few years until I found my home in the Gray Guys/Girls Master's Focus Triathlon Mentor Group. My home for the past two years has been with the Manatees.  I felt that I killed mentor groups since I was the last man standing in several of them but am happy to now be in group that has many active members.

FAMILY STATUS: My wife and I have three girls ages 8-13 years old.  My current favorite pet is my daughter's 2-year-old Chow Chow.  He is big and fluffy and loves everyone. 

CURRENT TRAINING: I have been doing the self-coached thing with a lot of help from people I have met through BT (thanks k9car363, marcag, JorgeM).  I have been preparing a Winter Bike Focus Group Training for the Kiwami Race Team over the past 5-6 weeks and the 12-week training launched this morning.  I have about 20 team member who joined me for the craziness and I will be leading them for the next month then jumping ship to participate in the TriDot Pre-Season Program for 8-weeks.  I couldn't pass up their new Mark Allen addition.  I will see how it differs from when I did their program in 2017.  I actually was supposed to do the Tridot program in 2022 too, but unlike 2017 when I entered the program coming off of an 8-week base training block I went into the 2022 TriDot season off of 4-5 weeks completely off.  The Tridot program does a ton of high intensity work and speed work which is great if you have the base, but doing speed and high intensity off of 5 weeks of rest caused me to get injured three times in the first 2 weeks so I bailed out went back to building base.  This year I will go into the Tridot program off of 8 weeks of base building.  Hopefully it will go better.  You have to watch those computer-generated training through.  

THIS YEAR'S RACES/EVENTS: The only thing on the Calendar right now is the Boston Marathon.  I really hit the bike and pool hard when I am training for running events.  I run my best when I consistent with my Triathlon training.  I like control of my training which is my I am self-coached so I am nervous about using TriDot training for 8-weeks leading up to the Boston Marathon but letting others do choose the workouts is my "step into the darkness" moment when I have to put my trust into something unknown so that I can learn and experience new things.  It is an experiment and if it works great and if not I am not out anything because Boston is for the experience not to win it

*** Continued***

GOALS/OBJECTIVES/DESIRES: My goal for my Kiwami Race team Winter Bike Training Group is for an average of 5% increase in FTP across the 20 people who are playing along. My goal for the Tridot training is to take a break from planning my training so I can refocus on the things that motivate me and the things I enjoy about triathlon.  My goals for the rest of the year is to build volume.  I have been shrinking volume over the last couple of years and want to build to get back to where I was when I was doing 70.3 races.

WHAT MAKES YOU A GOOD MANATEE: I am here so I can keep up-to-date on all the new things in the sport that come out.  I do that by following all your posts on new equipment, programs, and races you are interested in. You guys are really in the know and I am out of the loop without you.  You in turn get to suffer through all of my race reports and training highlights.  I will be a good manatee because I am interested in all of your posts and I will make my own posts too as proof of life.  

Welcome back, Curtis! 

Ann-Marie is also doing a TriDot Pre-Season program. I'm more jealous of your Winter Bike Focus program though!

At least you don't have much on your plate before mid April!!

Thanks for adding your more pointy end of the stick perspective to our chit chat!

I had considered inviting all the Manatees to join the Winter Bike Group.  So...if you want in send me a PM and I will send you an invite to group.  I guess this offer is open to all Manatees.  We are doing the first round a power testing the middle of next week so if you want to join you have until Sunday to get linked in with us.  

Thanks but I'm pretty sure you would crush me -- and I have a training plan lined up from now through AotC on April 1.

Hey Manatees! So nice to see so many back! I hope the new year is starting off well!! 

For me, well, I got covid. Last Thursday i started to feel really off and I had been working in the office - i went out for a lunch run that was supposed to be easy and it was very not easy. Made it home and did a rapid test that came back negative but put myself to bed. Anyway, it was Saturday before I tested myself again and sure enough that positive line came up right away. Feeling better every day and feel like maybe next week i'll get back to some light workouts and look at my half marathon training again. We shall see. Thankfully, none of the rest of my family have it - we've been attempting some isolation or well physical separation. It's not fun but if we can manage to not all get sick then it's a win. 

It's funny now at this point in time because people are asking 'is this your first time?' - and, yes, it is. 

Ugh! Sorry to hear that it was your "turn." Glad that you seem to be recovering.

Sorry you got tagged with it, but happy to read you are improving! I read something that said the current variant is so contagious that if you haven't gotten Covid yet you will and if you've had it before prepare for reinfection. I hope that's not true b/c I would like to be one of the never got it people! 

I sort of still raise chickens, but not really.  When work transferred me from Oklahoma to Houston we were not able to find any properties that allowed poultry or that had acreage.  Everything here has HOA's that prohibit chickens. Any home with an acer lot is going to start at about 3 times the upper limit for what we could get approved for on a home loan, so I am boarding my flock with a member of our poultry club who lived about an hour further out of Huston than we do.  I go to work chickens a few times a year, but that isn't really enough to say i raise chickens even if my name is listed as the owner of the flock.  

You must have really liked Gravel Worlds last year to select it as your A race this year.  Nice!

Good news for Ann-Marie!  Pickleball is now an activity in Strava! 

I feel like you understate your current biking - you are totally awesome and did an amazing amount of mileage and super cool events last year! 

lol, I have no idea how it rates strava!