Tri Training

I was excited to read this morning that my TIR teammate Katy has signed up for the Silverlake Tri in three weeks. It will be her first triathlon! I’m so pumped that more people are getting into the sport that I’ve come to love. There are so many benefits to doing triathlons — from the challenge to the competition to the crosstraining. You never get bored because you’re always doing a different sport, and each has its own quirks and tricks. I challenge everyone out there to try doing a triathlon at some point. You won’t regret it!
And hey — if you’re still a runner at heart, trust me when I say there is no better cross-training than cycling. For the past month and a half I’ve been running twice a week at best, and yet somehow I’ve maintained my running fitness and speed, as evidenced by my performance at the Bayou Bash. This is completely due to the fact that while I may only be running twice a week, I’m also cycling at least twice a week. After years of having an on-again off-again relationship with my bike, I’ve finally made peace with it over the last few months and am loving it.
My training is going fairly well. My next races are Silverlake on May 18 and Combat on May 24. I’ve got “mystery plans” for the night of May 17 (I can’t say what they are because it’s Jose’s birthday present), so I’ll probably be pretty tired for Silverlake. I plan to race harder at Combat and, with any luck, beat my time from last year.
On Sunday morning I rode just over 20 miles with the BAM girls. We took it really easy for the first 8 miles, averaging about 13 mph as we rode with one of the group’s beginners. She turned around on NASA Parkway just before we hit 146. We sped up after that and covered the rest of the Todville-to-Port Rd-to-Bay Area loop at an average of 17 mph or so. Total time for the 20 miles was 1:26, which included a couple lengthy stops due to stoplights that we weren’t heavy enough to trigger! It wasn’t the most intense workout, but it was quite an enjoyable ride. While riding into the wind up Todville, we were passed by a huge crowd of roadies heading in the other direction. I can only assume it was the Bike Barn/Space City Cycling group, as I believe I spied Joe among them.
Last night I almost bailed on swimming when I got to my car and realized I’d left my gym bag at home, but fortunately detouring past my apartment is not really that far out of the way. I got to the pool only 15 minutes later than planned and swam 1450 yards — 500 warmup, 5×100 hard, and 450 cooldown. It was supposed to be 500 cooldown but I lost count of my laps and only realized later that I’d shorted myself by one lap. I finally had a watch with me that I could wear in the water (thanks to being one of the first 300 women to join Trek’s new Women Who Ride club!) so I took a look at my 100 yard times. They were decent — between 1:44 and 1:47 for the “hard” repeats, and 2:00-2:05 for warmup/cooldown — but I’d like to be a little faster. I feel slow in the water right now, which is a little frustrating. The harder I swim, the slower I seem to go. I think I need to really concentrate on pulling, long strokes, and making the most of my glide. I’m also considering contacting a local swim coach recommended by my tri group to give me a couple lessons to tweak my stroke. Then again, it’d be pretty hard to earn a significant time gain on the swim when sprint races involve such short swim distances!
Tuesday is normally a running day, but I’m stuck in a sim until 9:00 tonight. I’ll take the day off and look forward to my first brick of the season tomorrow! There’s a large group of Tri on the Run folks, BAM folks, and others who do a bike/run brick every Wednesday on Middlebrook, but class has prevented me from going so far this spring. With the semester over, I can brick again!