tri-ac :: triathlete

Monday – off as usual

Tuesday – 2×14:00 @ threshold intensity + 10:00 active recovery (1:15:00) on trainer (rain)

Wednesday – am swim (2500yds) & noon run (1×22:00 @ VO2m (42:00))

Thursday – early morning 2hr moderate bike & evening 2k open water swim

Friday – moderate run 65mins (9:15/mi pace!)

Saturday – mock triathlon, sprint distance (800m, 20k, 5k) (skipped scheduled long run)

Sunday – Lake Stevens 70.3 course preview ride (58mi)

Training volume has been pretty consistent, and I’m feeling pretty healthy. My knee is a little twingey on the bike, but I think it’s fixable based on the adjustments made during my recent bike fit. Here’s the graph of my recent training volume.

Mock tri notes:

Somehow I’ve managed to schedule myself out of all the weekends where there are local races, so I had to, at least, hit my tri club’s season-starter mock tri. My goals were to make sure I had all my gear and that my transitions were smooth and concise. I didn’t want to hurt myself by going too hard, but I’ve never raced a sprint so I wanted to see how I would do. Also, I have a bunch of friends who’ve been training all winter, and I wanted to see how I stack up. I can’t help myself that way! We had a great turnout, almost 100 people racing!

So, of course the best way to start is no warmup![sarcasm] I waited a bit at the start of the swim, and let some folks clear the beach, and then I waded in. I wanted to not feel rushed by others pushing from behind. I started my watch on my own start. The swim was a triangle setup (+/-75yds, then 300, then 325 back to the beach). The water was a little chilly, but not bone-jarring-shivery chilly. I probably should have just started with the group because soon I was swimming over some folks as politely as I could (it was unavoidable in the density of people approaching our first “buoy” (a kayaker)). I was swimming polo style until I turned onto the second leg. Contact lessened as we spread out. I felt like my sighting was fairly good, and I didn’t stray too much. I started to hit a rhythm around 400yds. The second “buoy” came up and before I knew it I was headed back to the beach. I pulled down the neck and got a little water in the top of my wetsuit, and it rolled off very easily. It looked like I was in the top quarter coming out of the water. T1 was a challenge because I chose not to sit down. My lack of sea-legs made me almost fall over trying to put my shoes on. I didn’t bother with socks. So, it blew some time trying to steady myself. Lesson learned: next time, just sit down; get the shoes on; and get moving. I noticed two friends out of the corner of my eye. I was right with them exiting T1. I hopped on the bike and HAMMERED away from T1! Boy, that was fun. I think a lot of people were easing into their pace, and I blew by a whole bunch. My quads and hamstrings started to burn, of course, so I let up not wanting to pull anything. I settled into my bars and hit my pace. About then I remembered that I hadn’t hit my watch split button getting out of the water or getting on the bike. Oh well, who needs splits? I passed a few folks and only got passed by two. Not too shabby for me, still in the top quarter. T2 went a lot better. Shoes off, sat down, rolled socks on, slipped on shoes, hat on, hit watch button, and off! The run felt pretty good. This is where I expected to get passed. I actually didn’t get passed by all that many people, maybe four. Since I actually did get this split, I later discovered I ran 7:56/mile coming in at 1:22 for the full event. I can’t remember EVER running that pace for 5k! So, that was pretty gratifying. I did get caught by a friend at the end, but it was nice to go over the line together. I toyed with doing a long run later in the day but decided not to push my luck on such a nice day.

HIM course preview ride:

It’s definitely rolling hills. Everything that seems flat is at a slight pitch one way or another. But, for all the slopes, it wasn’t killer, so I left the preview ride feeling good about my prospects of getting around the course in reasonable shape. I did get down into my 34×25, but it felt smooth, not a grind. It’s definitely going to be all about protecting my running legs and not fighting to keep moving forward on the bike. There are even a couple of descents that can be bombed so that should be fun. One is fast enough that I couldn’t bring myself to stay in the aerobars. I was happy to tuck it in the drops, but staying aero was too sketchy. And it kept my hands near the brakes in case any dopey drivers decide to do something rash.