Vision Quest

I've been taking advantage of my 3-week holiday break from school to hit up my tri training hard. I've actually been to my gym so many times this past week that I easily picked up my 'Gym Rat' badge on Foursquare! You get a Gym Rat badge for checking in 10 times to venues tagged 'gym' in 30 days, and for me that venue is Vision Quest.

Vision Quest (VQ) is a training center in Chicago that's geared towards cyclists and triathletes. They offer coached workouts throughout the week in cycling, swimming, strength training and yoga. I really like VQ, it's full of great coaches and friendly members and I really enjoy doing my training with them. Over the past year I've taken several classes at their facilities, and just this past month I took the plunge and became a full time VQ member.

With my schedule suddenly becoming a lot busier because of school, I decided that I had to replace my training quantity for quality. I used to have a lot of free time to train, but my actual workouts were pretty loose and unstructured. Now that I don't have as much time, I need to get in good quality workouts whenever I can. At VQ every workout is really well structured and fits into a larger training plan to help me meet my goals.

What are my training goals? Well, right now my goals are to go faster in all three disciplines. I'm a fast runner, an average biker, and a slow swimmer. This winter I'm focusing on bringing up my bike strength, and in the spring I think I will focus on my swimming technique. Overall, I would say that I'm not a very fast triathlete. I generally finish in the middle of the pack (MOP) during most races. The big goal for me is to move up to the front of the pack (FOP). If I can be an FOP triathlete next summer I would be extremely happy.

A couple quick digital tidbits:

- I just saw this week that VQ received a packet in the mail from Google to be included in the Google Favorite Places program in Chicago. How cool is that!

- I'm checking into Foursquare every time I go to VQ to help me keep track of my visits. This way I can easily see how many times I've been to VQ over the past couple of weeks and hold myself accountable to my training.

- Here's my 'Gym Rat' badge!