Background Info

A little bit of background on my last post. Vision Quest is a training center in Chicago and Highland Park for cyclists and triathletes. The founder and owner of the place is Robbie Ventura, a member of the US Postal Service cycling who was teammates with Lance Armstrong. VQ offers coached workouts throughout the week in cycling, swimming, strength training and yoga. I've taken several 8-week classes at VQ (they call them Taste of VQs) over the past year and so far I've been really happy with the training and the strength I've gained through these classes. Over the course of these 8 week sessions we met once a week. The director of the Chicago facility, Dave Noda, has been super helpful and encouraging throughout this past year and even invited me to join the VQ team for several outdoor rides and races. All of this gave me a good idea of what VQ is all about and eventually I reached a point where I wanted more. So, that’s when I started thinking about joining VQ as a full fledged member.

Up to this point my triathlon training has been pretty unstructured. I try to squeeze in a little swim, bike and run during weeknights when I can and then try to get in a long bike and/or run on the weekends. The length and specifics of my training sessions were dependent on my next target race. This worked out relatively well at first, but my progress has felt like its hit a plateau lately. I started doing triathlons in 2007 and after a rocky first year I felt that my next year went a lot better. My times improved and I felt stronger at all three disciplines. This year has been different though… now that I have a bit of experience under my belt my goals are bigger than just finishing races. Now that I have baseline times to measure myself off of, I want to beat those times. I want to go faster and harder. This year the goal was to beat my times from last year, and although I did get faster I feel like I can do so much more. So that’s why I started looking into stepping up my training and taking it to the next level at VQ.

Add in the fact that I just started the Part-Time MBA program at Kellogg in September and you see where I needed to change up my training to fit my new goals and my new lifestyle. I don’t have as much free time as I used to and I want more structured workouts. My new training philosophy is quality over quantity, and this is where VQ comes into the picture. So, we’ll see how this whole work, school and training thing go together. Again, hopefully I’ll get my money’s worth out of VQ and get my time’s worth out of my training.

Starting things off

So, I finally made the decision to join Vision Quest. After hemming and hawing for a couple of months I finally took the plunge and took my training up another level. Now the real question is whether or not I’ll actually get my money’s worth and use my VQ membership as much as I should. VQ ain’t cheap, I’ll tell you that much. I’ll have to go at least 2-3 times a week to really make it worth my while. And to that end, I’m going to start keeping this blog to track my training and my progress so I can keep myself accountable to myself. Hopefully I’ll update a lot and maintain a high level of commitment to my training. If not I can always look back at past entries and use that as motivation to get my butt back on track.

I’m setting up a time to do my fitness assessment with Robbie Ventura next week. Hopefully he tells me I have limitless potential and takes me under his wing as his next protégé. Ha!