Mini-triathlon, sort of.

A busy day of training today. I didn’t fit in yesterday’s functional exercises, so I had to play catch up today.

Run. Warm up, then 10 mins of 10K pace, then jog back. It’s difficult to maintain a decent pace in the dark, on pavements with black ice, when the temperature is about 1 degree. But if I can run at 4 min/km pace in these conditions, I should manage it in the balmy summer sun on Dundee in May….

Then the strength functionals from yesterday. Single leg squats, hamstring raises with an ankle weight, lunges, then some ankle eversion and inversion exercises with the resistance band at the end.

Then back on the bike. The rear wheel is true again, and having cleaned it up after the race, it’s running nicely. The front mech cable has stretched significantly, so I need to tighten that up later on, but it still works. Just about. 20 mins warm up, then 12x 15 secs flat out with 1 min rest. The pleasing thing here is not the power, or the speed (although hitting 34 mph on the last sprint isn’t hanging about), it’s the HR of 140 for the warm up, and being able to bring it back to 140 after the sprints. The mad HR of 180 on the bike of a few months ago….

Recovery Swim. Arf arf.

Back in the pool. Today’s swim is labelled a recovery swim, something to settle me back into swimming after the race two days ago. No kick lengths, no drills, but some timed 100s with the pull buoy, and some sprints at the end.

Warm Up
———-
400m swim
———-
Main Work
———-
8×100 4pull 4 swim on 1:45 (1:32, 1:38, 1:40, 1:39, 1:40, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38)
16x25m building pace to close to max sprint on 45 (Started at 30 secs, then got it down to 16 secs for the last 2!)
———-
Cool Down
———-
200 swim

Total length only 1800m, and some rest, but plenty of hard work too. I managed to get the last couple of 25s down to 16 seconds, which at least shows that I have some speed now to go along with my glide. I certainly felt zippier in the pool tonight. Working hard, but far more able to keep up with the times. But then, it was a recovery swim….

I see the swim on Thursday looks pretty tough….

Rest Day

A rest day after the race yesterday. I didn’t think I’d be that tired, but my chest wall was pretty tight today. I think it’s probably due to spending 40 minutes in the aero position on the bike – it’s a radically different position from the Kuota, with or without the bars on. Graeme also suggested that breathing hard in extreme cold can cause some chest wall pain the next day…

My wheel was out of true following the race yesterday – probably as a consequence of my multitool falling out of the speed box at great speed, falling through the rear wheel and catching the spokes.

Spokes on the Perth road managed to sort it by close of play for £10, which is a winner. They also said that they could make up the power tap into any rim of my choice. Sounds like a plan. My savings account for new wheels starts today!

Monikie Duathlon Series Race 1

Monikie Winter Duathlon 1 Cycle.

The Monikie Summer Duathlon series was my introduction to multi-sport racing earlier this year. The improvement in times between the three races, without much in the way of training, certainly no structured training, is what gave me the bug to keep on with the training, and take it (more) seriously. So the winter series is another chance to get more enthusiasm, and a gauge of where I have got to.

But racing on days like this isn’t the idea of Triathlon racing I have in my mind – swimming in still calm, ice blue lakes, running in 18 degree sunshine, light cooling breeze, cycling on mirror smooth roads in dead calm…. Temperature this morning was 1.5 degrees, there was ice on the car, and snow on the ground up in Monikie. No question that I was still going to do the race, of course, but it wasn’t massively enticing!

The run went well – I took it very steady. I was very wary of killing myself on the run, leaving nothing for the cycle. So, I took it steady. The second 1km was slow, but it was into the wind, and I was able to wind it up for the second half. Negative split. I suspect I could have pushed on harder, but I didn’t know the cycle route, so I really didn’t want to be left wanting come cycle time.

Cocked up transition. I put the shoes on the bike before hand, to speed up the process, but I forgot to open the straps!!! So when I got on the bike I couldn’t slip my feet into the shoes. I took the first 20 seconds pissing about getting my feet in the shoes, at a slow wobbly speed. But, once I got going, the bike went really well. First time riding the new bike in anger, so I was a bit cautious to start off with, but the bike is pretty stable, very quick, and the position on the bars is very natural. Of course it’s not so great on the hills, but the Apex WiFli is wide range, 11 to 28, so plenty of bottom end to push up the hills. It’s not great stamping on the pedals, though – not a lot of room between the saddle and the cockpit. But, I managed to average 230W, 252W normalised, and over 30kph on the whole route. Hard work, but I was pleased with it. I was overtaken by about 3 people – on pretty flash bikes – and one fat bloke, but I overtook plenty of folk too.

Results are here. 24th overall, 10th in category, 26th on the run, 23rd on the cycle.

This is a bit of a turnaround from Summer – I was always higher placed on the run, and lower on the cycle. Swings and roundabouts. Push harder on the run, I suppose!

Back to training on Tuesday!