If I had to give my 2024 triathlon training efforts a grade, it’d be a solid B-.
I cycled and swam significantly less than I did in 2023 and 2022, but I managed to run and walk more. My training consistency took a bit of a hit with the upheaval of moving from Virginia to New York, but never completely fell off the rails. I learned how important it is to have Default Run and Default Cycling routines (the running or cycling route you take when you don’t want to think at all about your running or cycling route). When those need to be recreated from scratch in a new location, you can be left feeling a bit unmoored until you’ve landed new ones.
In 2024, I completed 541 miles of running across 106 hours and 4 minutes. In 2023, I did 528 miles and 470 miles in 2022. Moving to the Hudson Valley has helped with this because my new Default Run is on a dirt path along the Hudson River, not the sidewalks of Arlington.
In 2024, I only completed 55,144 yards of swimming, down from 95,350 in 2023 and 98,917 in 2022. This is where my move from Arlington worked against me. In Arlington, I was mostly swimming in a beautiful aquatic center within walking distance of my apartment. In Haverstraw, I’m swimming in a relatively dank gym pool a fifteen-minute drive away. I also did some organized open water swims with my coach when I lived in Virginia, but I didn’t manage to swim outside (apart from my race) once in 2024. This is something I need to fix in 2025.
I cycled for 2,170 miles in 2024, down from 2,236 in 2023 and 2,534 in 2022. Again, this is where my move has complicated things. When I lived in Arlington, I could ride from my front door to a couple different rail trails where I didn’t have to worry about cars. That’s not really the case in Haverstraw. I can drive to Harriman State Park with my bike and do some beautiful (and hilly) rides in relative safety there, but I’m extremely skeptical about riding on the roads near my apartment.
I was already kind of anxious about road riding, and then the Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau tragedy happened over the summer, and it sketched me out even further. To counteract this, I let myself invest in improving my indoor riding setup this fall in hopes of not letting that affect my training too much. I also bought a gravel bike in October so I could start riding the trail I mentioned earlier.
When I set up my race schedule for 2024 I didn’t know I was going to be moving to New York. That meant the two Virginia races I scheduled because they were convenient suddenly became very inconvenient. I bailed on both and ended up only doing the Michigan 70.3 in September. This was my second time doing the race, so it was nice heading into it knowing what the course was like and how to handle all the logistics.
Remember how I said I didn’t do any open water swimming this year? Yeah, it showed up big time in this race with some mild panicking early in the swim, but eventually calming down and finishing it without incident (but slower than 2023). I was determined to do something better than the year before, so I focused on going hard (probably too hard) on the bike and ended up improving on my 2023 time by at least fifteen minutes. The run, though, was back to disappointment as I paid for my exuberance on the bike by just absolutely death-marching the admittedly much hotter than expected run to a significantly slower time than 2023.
Looking Ahead to 2025
Now that we’re settled into our new place in New York, I’m excited about a less disrupted year of training. I’d like to sit here in a year and report that I had my biggest year of training ever. I’ll need to figure out the open water swimming situation (I’ve got my eye on a couple of options, and it’s unfortunate that having a river in my backyard hasn’t made this simple) and figure out how to balance the soulcrushingness of indoor cycling with the danger of riding outdoors, but I’m feeling optimistic I can have a good year.
Regardless of how the year goes, trading the miserable Arlington, Virginia summer for the cold and hills of the Hudson Valley is a net-win, in my book.