It’s Saturday January 8th. I am on zwift doing a 1 hour recovery ride at <150 watts and watching Armin Van Buren on YouTube. The day started off with moving some soil for a big project over Christmas break that I did, a 3KM swim with 5x200m at 1:39pace, a trip to the dog Park with Roxy, Sydney, and Fiona, take down some decorations, an easy 8mile run at 8:55/mile avg, now the bike followed by Epson Salt Bath, then to the Oro Valley for Mr Ans hibachi with my boss and Fiona. It’s how i roll.

In 2021, I hit my all time best run mileage of 2,625miles as I completed my 2nd 50mile Ultra in 8hr22min in Vegas, taking off 2hr45min on a harder course in Sonoita, AZ. I also finished my 2nd Tucson marathon in 3:19, my 44th marathon since 2009.

The primary focus of the year was Ironman Couer d’Alene, the hardest ever Ironman with a 27%DNF and a marathon at 102F. I didnt do that well but because of 200 Kona spots due to Covid, I secured my 3rd go at the Ironman World Championships but chose for St George in April 2022 instead of Kona because this was the race I wanted to do in 2020 before Covid took that away from me. I biked 6,112 miles during the year up from 5,000 the year before and with 2.5 months off after 70.3 Arizona in October. In that race, at the end of a 2 week RV holiday to NV and CA, I performed poorly as well but also managed to secure a spot for the 70.3 World Championship in St George on the same course by taking 3rd. I am really excited about this line up and expect this to really set the stage for my ultimate goal in 2022 of setting an IRONMAN personal best with a sub 9:22 at IRONMAN Arizona. It will have been 7 years since I went that fast at IM Western Australia but believe with the volume in my legs over these years, I have a fighting chance.

After 5 days off at Christmas, mt fitness fell off and put me back where I was 1 year ago. To start we have the Mesa marathon on Feb 12 where I will see how I feel and how fast I can go on the day. I am using the Advanced Hansons Marathon method for this plan and then will overlap this as my run structured training into IMWC and IMAZ. The rest of the frame work is back to my 2013 roots of Joe Friels, Your Best Triathlon.

Week 1 I was up 10pounds to 189.6 and had me see 16hrs of tri training and some strength work. This week 2 will have me close to 19hrs including 100km, 62 miles of running. I weighed in 187.2 on Monday down 2 lbs and the fitness is already coming around.

I did a 20min FTP test at 95% and got 276, down about 20%. I repeated a week later and improved to 286 which I will continue to do so that my TrainingPeaks stress scores are more accurate.

Its going to be a full year. Stay tuned.