Some days...

... are just good training days. I'm not sure exactly why, but this past Sunday, I did my prescribed 3 hour ride followed by my 30 minute run. The ride had some power intervals in my biggest gear followed by the remainder at a moderate pace. I did the intervals and then proceeded down the bike trail cruising along at around 200-230 watts. I ended up averaging 217 watts for the ride and 218 over the last hour. 2 weeks ago on the PowerCranks for a 3 hour ride, I dropped down to a 154 watt average for the last hour. I was much stronger this time around! My hip flexors crapped out last time at around 2:15 into the ride. I did well all the way until about 10 minutes to go this past weekend. Then, for the run, I pushed it a bit and did the entire thing at sub 7-minute mile pace. I was doing around 6:45 or 6:50 pace for the whole thing and my HR was in the 150s and never crossed over 160 for the run. Pretty aerobic for me. All in all, it was a beautiful day and a great workout. Days like that really make this hobby fun!

New progress in a new year

I've been slacking lately for these posts, so I thought I would catch up real quick...

Swimming:
I got in a couple of good weeks for the last 2 weeks at around 10K yds each. Even over our trip to see the in-laws in Illinois, there was a very nice Y I could swim at just literally down the street. When I got back, I did a timed 200 to compare to my original timed 200 when I started with coach. I did it in 3:00 flat, which is about a 12% improvement compared to my original 3:24. If I can improve my race splits by 12%, that will be huge. It's over 3 minutes faster at the half distance and I could possibly get the 2.4 mile swim down to around 1:10-1:15, which was my original goal. Over the long term, I'd like to get down to the 1:05 to 1:08 range, but so far so good on the swim front.

Biking:
I have been gradually building strength and endurance with combined spin/weight workouts and am feeling pretty good. Today, I had a test bike from Wheelworks for my 3 hour ride and I felt pretty good for the hill repeats and then the remainder of the ride. It did feel strange being on "regular" cranks again after 4 months, but I think I've gained a fair amount of power. The test bike was an incredibly sweet setup and now I'm just debating how much $$ I want to spend. See picture below.

I can get a really good deal on this '08 model, but I'm trying to decide if the extra money beyond the B12 or the B2 is worth it. Decision to come soon...

Running:
I had an excellent run this past Friday morning where I covered 10 miles in about 1:15 with big hills (it's kind of hard to run 10 miles around here without doing some pretty big hills). My foot was a little bit sore and tender afterward, so I will have to watch that, but it felt OK on my post-ride run today. I did 4.1 miles in about 0:29 minutes. I've been doing 25-30 mile weeks for the last several weeks, but the upcoming test will be the Carlsbad half-marathon in 2 weeks. I'm thinking about trying to PR it, but may just shoot for sub 1:30.

Chlorine

So I've been spending A LOT of time in the pool for several months now. It's continuing to pay off, slowly but surely. Most of my gains are from changes to my stroke I think, but I assume I'm continuing to build endurance. This morning was a good test because my main set was 3x500 on 9:03. Before, I was lucky to swim one 500 in 9 minutes, let alone 3 of them. I did them in 8:13, 8:32, and 8:33. Not too bad. I'd like to down under 8 minutes for a 500, but this is good progress...

Still get annoyed when you always smell like chlorine, though.

More Data

Clear signs of progress using the PowerCranks. Today, my plan had me doing a 2.5 hour ride with power intervals. Put it into my hardest gear and go hard for 6 minutes, then 5, then 4, with the rest interval being half the length of the hard effort. Then repeat the entire cycle. Because of the crappy weather, I decided to do this workout on my trainer. Being on the trainer for 2 and a half hours is not my idea of a good time, but I just couldn't bring myself to face the 40 degree, rainy weather again this weekend. I had enough of that last weekend.

So I did my warmup for about 15 minutes, then I shifted into my hardest gear and went at it for 6 minutes. I was holding around 230-250 watts or so for the 6 minutes. Then 3 minutes rest and then do it again for 5 minutes. I made my way through this workout and it wasn't completely horrible. Very, very hard, but not horrible. Then, after about an hour total of intervals, I still had 1.5 hours to go on the trainer. So to pass the time, I started doing 10 minute stints with 30 seconds of rest for my rear end in between the sets. I tried to alternate gears a bit for a variety of efforts. I was still holding around 160-180 watts for these intervals, so overall I averaged 177 watts for the 2.5 hours on the trainer. Normally, on the roads, I average much higher power, but for the trainer, that was pretty good. I am making clear progress. My first decent rides on the trainer after starting to adapt to the PowerCranks were about 125 or 130 watts for 1:15. Now, I'm up to 177 watts for 2.5 hours. That's about a 35% improvement (over a longer time, even). If that improvement translates to a 35% improvement off of a 2:40 half-iron bike split, I will be stoked. We shall see. Also, if I think about the iron distance bike split, my ride at Wisconsin in 2007 was 6:45. 35% off that is gigantic. We'll see how Louisville goes, but I HAVE to be better; just not sure by how much.

The Candy Store, part 2

I don't know how people decide what bike to buy.

I went back to WheelWorks and spent some more time with Joe Santos, who impresses me more and more. He has spent hours and hours with me allowing me to do test rides and I still haven't spent a penny in his shop. I guess that's the way you develop loyal customers. In any case, I am still going through the selection process. This time around I rode the B12 again, twice. I rode a P2 again. I also rode 2 different sizes of P3s.

The B12 felt quite good. It feels stable and fast. The frame may be a bit short for me, but overall it feels good. After my first whirl on it, Joe tweaked the front end and moved my hand position upward. After doing that, I felt really good on it. My only minor complaint was that my knees where bumping my elbows a bit when in the aero position, a sign that the frame/top tube may be a bit short for me.

Next was the P2 again. It also felt pretty good from a geometry standpoint. It still felt a little twitchy and I didn't feel as stable on it as I did on the B12. Otherwise, it felt good. Next was a P3 with 808s. This was the first time I have been on a P3 and the first time I have ever ridden with real race wheels. It may have all been in my head, but I felt really fast with the wheels. Also, I don't think I'll have a problem with deep wheels. It was fairly windy on my test ride, but I never felt like I couldn't control the bike. The fit was good, very similar to the P2, but it also felt a little more twitchy than the Felt B12. Moving to a smaller size P3 helped a little, but the Felt still was a tad more stable for me.

The other option Joe is setting up for me is a really sweet deal on a Felt DA. It normally retails for like 9500, but he can get the '08 version built up with the race wheels and a PowerTap for less than 7000. It's a little more than I wanted to spend, but I want to at least try the bike. The geometry of the frame is similar to the B12, but it has the bayonnet fork (like the B2), so that will be interesting. I still need to ride a B2 and I will try the DA that they build up for me. I may even borrow it for a few days.

I'm to the point now where they all feel pretty decent, so it will be a tough decision. Leaning towards the Felt right now, just not sure which one! Hoping to have a new bike in January!

Slacking

I've been slacking a bit lately on the posts. Between family, work, and training, the last few weeks have been quite busy, but then again, that's the same schedule all the time. From a tri-training perspective, I've had an interesting few weeks.

I met again with Coach and spent some time in the pool. I had reached a bit of a plateau and he hadn't finished off the video from our first session so we decided to meet again and take a look at my stroke progress (or lack thereof). Even though I felt like I had changed it somewhat already, his comments were basically the same. I do too much catch-up, which slows me down, and my timing is off. I need to start me reach sooner. The other thing he added this time around is that when I do reach, I cross over too much, i.e., my right arm goes to my left side and vice versa. So we've added two more drills to help correct these things. A new reach/timing drill where I start my pull before I start my recovery with the back arm and a drill where I concentrate on doing my reach out at 9 or 10 o'clock towards the side of my body. And boy, what a difference. It really feels weird, but the first time in the pool after this little session with Coach, I cut 2-3 seconds of my 50 yd time. I could do a 50 in 0:41, which is really fast for me. It felt quite strange, but I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I don't have much endurance and cannot keep the good form for very long, so I've still got a lot of work to do. At least I can see a path now towards a 1:10 iron distance swim, which seemed unfathomable before.

Data

Gotta say, I love having the PowerTap. I download every ride and study them briefly before moving on, trying to learn what I can. This week's key bike on the weekend had some power intervals. Warm up, then do a one mile section in the biggest gear trying to accelerate the whole time. Then repeat 3 more times. So I drove down to the hatchery this morning and started from there. I headed over to the canal and did my warmup and then, when I got to 15 minutes, I turned around and started cranking. I was able to accelerate for about 2 minutes or so, but then I petered out a bit. And man did those intervals hurt. They weren't long, but they got my HR up into the 170's on the bike, which is a rarity for me. And pushing along in your biggest gear is no fun. After the prescribed intervals, I headed up to Beals point and finished off the rest of the ride around the lake for a total of 2.5 hours. After that I changed and hit the bike path for a 4 mile run in about 30 mins. I felt pretty good afterwards. Very tired legs, but pretty good.

The coolest thing about the ride was all the data from the PowerTap. I was up over 300 watts for each of the intervals and averaged around 330 or so for each. I'm also experimenting now with intervals on the PowerTap and I have no idea why I didn't try that before! It makes it so easy. And then, on top of that, even though the SW is not chock full of features, you can add intervals afterwards. My overall ride looked like this:



You can see the intervals at the beginning of the plot. Pretty cool. Then, I zeroed in on each separate interval and you can see the stats for each. Way cool. For an engineer, this is pretty cool stuff and even though training with power is by no means cheap, I LOVE the PowerTap and am really looking forward to tracking my progress. After all, the first step to improving a process is to measure it.