Seriously, who thought up this dumb daylight savings thing, anyway? To make my short Florida visit even shorter, I had to deal w/ losing an hour on the clock. Flying out at 6 a.m. meant taking off at 5… which meant getting to the airport at 4… which meant leaving at 3:20… which ultimately meant waking up at 3:00. Going to bed at 1:00 almost seemed like a waste of time. Lucky for me, airplanes are like sleeping pills: as soon as I hit the seat, I’m out. Two airplanes, a car ride, and several hours later, I finally made it back home.
I think it’s safe to say the theme of the week’s training is most definitely roller coaster.
Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Twist and turns.
Coming off of a less-than-thrilling run yesterday, I was not exactly looking forward to getting on my bike and pedaling for 3 hours. The idea of doing anything except vegging out on the couch seemed absurd. I could barely keep my eyes open… but after making a quick lunch and psyching myself up for it, I finally put on my gear and got myself outside.
I typically do all my workouts on my own. I know, I know- so boring and lonely… but in all honesty, a lot of the time I prefer it. I don’t have to worry about holding anyone else back or anyone holding me back. I just never got into having training partners. Perhaps it’s also b/c i haven’t met too many folks who do tri’s… but I do have one and we decided to do our 3 hour ride together. Even after getting such a late start, we had a great ride.
There’s a section of road called Beach Drive that stretches from DC to Maryland that is closed off to cars on the weekends. It’s fantastic. Even when you come across joggers or mothers pushing their strollers, you don’t have to slow b/c you’ve got the whole road. We rode up and down a few times in order to get our distance in and I only had to stop twice for two stoplights.
My workout consisted of 1 hour in HR zone 1/2 followed by 20 minutes z4, 5:00 recovery, 20 mins z4, 5:00 recovery, 10:00 z4, 1 hour z 1/2. My first 20:00 interval I think I was still climbing and getting into the groove, so I didn’t quite hit my zones, but the second two intervals, I was feeling great and pushing strong. This was my first ride outside with my newly upgraded aero bars and I gotta say even though I’m still not very smart about all this fancy bike gear, they made all the difference. Initially my bike came with aero bars that sloped downward. I’m not very tall and I don’t have a long reach, so even with a small frame, I was having trouble reaching my shifters and it was straining my neck/shoulders. These new bars feel much more natural.
I still have so much room to improve on the bike. It’s certainly my weakest of the three disciplines, but I’m learning to enjoy it. I have a tendency to get out there a ride at a comfortable pace instead of pushing myself, therefore my goal of increasing speed and efficiency is taking longer than I’d prefer. However, today I felt good. At one point I was leading the pack for quite a while. Two serious (looking) cyclists “grabbed a wheel” and drafted off me for a good while. Eventually one fell back and one passed me. We kept playing cat and mouse until my interval was over and took full advantage of my scheduled recovery. It felt good knowing that me and dude in an IM jersey was riding at my pace. It’s the small things that bring joy :)
Ride totaled a little over 3 hours and I gotta say, while I could have gone longer and I could have run afterwards, I sure am glad I didn’t have to. Hittin that couch and finally getting to veg out was glorious. My legs weren’t done-for (which is a good sign), but I was just utterly exhausted.
Turns out I was on my bike today longer than I slept last night…. yep, that feels about right.
