One of the exciting things about triathlon is that no two races are ever the same. Races may be of the same distance if they're standard distances, but otherwise the terrain and conditions are super variable from course to course and from day to day on the same course. One of the things that I struggled with when I first started learning the land disciplines is how to deal with terrain. We don't have terrain in swimming. (Well I guess in open water we sort of do, in the sense that conditions are sort of like terrain, but as someone from a swimming background I have the feel for the water and experience to get me through whatever is thrown at me conditions wise so I've never really had this issue with swimming.) In addition, coming from a really flat place (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), my experience with hills was literally zero. So when I was first trying to get the hang of running and biking hills, what I found was that I was usually pretty good at grinding my way to almost the top, but as soon as the steepest section passed and the uphill slowly started to level out, I would lose all of my drive/energy/momentum and just sort of die. The hardest part of any hill for me for some reason was never on the parts with the steepest grades, but rather the section that came just after that as the hill started to level out at the top.
In trying to tackle that, I sort of fell back on open water racing experience, which had taught me a lot about how important it is to be able to kick it up a gear on command and then come back down to whatever race pace was without needing some form of extended recovery. (Sometimes you have to pass people or sometimes you have to catch up to someone to get in a good draft spot, etc. etc.) So quality active recovery was something I trained in the pool so I could up the intensity and drop back at will without blowing myself completely. It was something I started to play around with on the bike and on the run last summer in a bunch of different contexts because I figured it would be a useful skill there too. So that was a really long winded explanation of what I was going for here with today's set. Here it is!
Today's PM Workout: Trainer ride
Summary:
- WU: 10 mins easy
- Pre-set: 5 x :30/:30 spin ups
- Main set: 10 x 5 on/1 off, alternating...
- 2 rounds split as 2 @ base (95 rpm), 1 pick up @ base + 10 rpm, 2 @ base, 1 recovery
- 2 rounds split as 2 @ climb (+4 gears, 60 rpm), 1 pick up @ climb + 10 rpm, 2 @ climb, 1 recovery
- (until you get to 10 rounds)
- Technique work: 10 x :45/:15 single leg drill
- WD: 5 mins easy
- Totals: 21.47 mi, 1:30:17, 14.3 mph average
Notes/thoughts:
- I feel like my bike set up needs adjusting again. I'm not sure what the deal is but normally I find myself wanting to push back in the saddle during the harder efforts but today I was definitely shifting forward, which is strange for me. I may or may not try and play around with that, see if higher/further forward works a little better for me pedaling mechanics wise. I will also probably go get re-fit professionally in the spring, but in the meantime I figure it can't hurt too much to try some positional changes, especially since my body is asking for it. Just have to make sure I don't do anything that results in weird mechanical joint/muscle pain. Will be careful...
- Not gonna lie, the knees are achy. Gonna take an NSAID tonight, hopefully won't linger. The knees were fine during the day and I spent a lot of time on my feet today, so that was reassuring, but I hope the biking doesn't continue to be sort of tough on them.
- I can't decide if I found the lower cadence rounds to be harder or the higher cadence ones...Maybe really what I found hard were just the one minute push intervals? Lol I don't know. It was pretty rough. I can usually tell because somewhere in the middle my brain totally goes and I can't remember what's coming next unless I look at my timer to tell me. That happened on like round 4 or something and I was like, oh, this is going to be a long one. But I got through and I'm pretty happy with how it panned out in the end.
- Random one: APAC is starting on the other side of the world in about a half hour. I will be diligently stalking prelims via MeetMobile. Yesterday was the 5 year anniversary of my last APAC. I had posted a Facebook status about making it through to 3 finals and being on two girls relays that medalled. It made me really nostalgic, it had been a really great way to close out my high school swimming career, I miss that team so much all the time. I hope the little ones (some of whom I have known since they were literally in elementary school) have a fantastic time and do a fantastic job this week/weekend.
Okay, it's been a long day, time to go home and double check my bike tire pressure so I can hit up the pool tomorrow morning. Happy hump day!
Much love,
Jess
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