I still owe you a heat related training and power meter discussion too...I just think I need more time with my power meter to smartly tote my thoughts online about it.
After a somewhat normal training week, Saturday presented itself with a looming 4 hour bike ride and a 30 minute brick run. Sounds well enough, right? Right!
Let's back the truck up to Thursday afternoon. I go to my favorite tri store, Tribe Multisport, and have a Retul fitting done. Alan, the bike fitting genius, moves my seat up and forward, puts a shorter stem on while moving my aerobar extensions forward (evidently I have long forearms...who knew?) while dropping the entire cockpit by 1 cm. Small adjustments that will make the entire time spent on the bike a pleasurable measure of efficiency and comfort. It took all of 1 hour and a half, with some time hopping on and off the bike and spinning with some video going. All sorts of measurements were taken and recorded. For the data junkies, this is heaven. All in all, pretty much well worth the cost to have this done. I highly recommend it (yes, after the 4 hour ride in the new position too).
Friday, was my weekly day off from training, so we spent it at the Waste Management Open, which, to golf afficionados, is cleverly known as the old Phoenix Open or new Garbage Open. No matter what you call it, it is fun for short bursts of time. We were able to camp directly at the 18th green and watch about 4 hours of pros hack it up. Most of them weren't exactly stellar on this green as it's pretty tough with a nasty slope on it. The food I had didn't agree with me and I came within seconds of hurling it all up on the ride home. I was in a thought process that the crap food was going to ruin my Saturday training day and was thinking of contingent plans...alas, no puking today and my tummy remained intact, righting itself throughout the evening.
Saturday blossomed into a windy, cloudy, and cold (for AZ standards) day. It was only 48 degrees when I started and a whopping 60 when I finished. The bike felt pretty good. More pressure on my shoulders, as expected, was apparent from the slight change in my front end angle. Other than that, things were good. Oh, there was flat #5 as I ran over something rather unpleasant. I think I am the flat king for 2014.
I tried fueling with Hammer Perpeteum again this time and found it just isn't working as well as my Honey Stinger or leftover PowerBar gels. For some reason it just didn't give me any "pop" or energy on my ride. I know it's somewhat un-sugared and has protein in it for longer rides, but when I've done rides fueling with Honey Stinger or other gels, it is more successful. It wasn't a bad ride for fueling, just not as good as the gels. Maybe I shouldn't venture too far out there and just stick with what works. I wanted to try Perpeteum again as I had used it when I was cycling only (no triathlons) and it was okay...but I had never used gels when I was just cycling either. I will finish the canister of it and not purchase it again as it just doesn't work too well for me. Does anybody else have a gel or fueling method that works for them?
I hopped off the bike (okay, gingerly swung my leg over) and changed into my running gear. Newton Motion shoes (bright orange...oh yeah), Nike running shorts, and one of my favorite shirts from Fort Worth Running. I only went in the store once and it was pretty cool, so I bought a shirt. It's a normal run of the mill nondescript Brooks white running shirt, but I do like the whole Fort Worth mantra when I sport that around because nobody around here has anything like that. My 30 minute run went rather well, with the usual jello leg syndrome the first mile, then my legs opened up and I felt pretty good. I managed to get a little over 3.5 miles in that 30 minutes and felt okay (triathlon speak = "not too tired") at the end. It was a tough training day, but I felt good.
Sunday...Super Bowl Sunday...the day my legs just wouldn't work. I had a nice 2450M swim at a moderate/fast pace and then had a 60 minute run. 15' warm up, then 30' of 1' at 5K pace and 1' at marathon pace until the last 15 minutes of cool down at a Z2 pace. I hopped out of the pool, changed into my running garb and then hopped on the treadmill only to be rudely awakened that my legs were not interested in any of that nonsense. I started at 8:30min/mile pace, then dropped to a 9:00min/mile pace and my legs were protesting loudly. I. Felt. Like. Shit. After 1 mile on the treadmill, I grabbed my old Asics Noosa shoes (I wear this to kick around with at the gym and only use my Newtons for running, nothing else) and plopped them on Julie's gym bag as she was on the treadmill a few down from me, and dashed outside to finish my run. Once I got outside, I felt mentally better, but the legs just wouldn't turn over like I wanted. Embrace the suck. I ended up with 7.12 miles in that 60 minutes and was warming up to a decent pace, with my form slowly feeling like it was decent, and me realizing that today just wasn't my day and to learn from struggling through days like today will feel like miles 10-26 in the full ironman. So get used to it.
I'm kind of thinking about talking about recovery drinks next time as Julie is trying a different brand and I'm pretty much sold on 2 different brands but boy are they expensive.
