Confessions of a Gym Class Hero

Having had a few days to digest my race at Elkhart Lake, I have a few main thoughts regarding the race in general and my performance.

The race locale and the course were great.  I don’t think I have swam in a clearer lake, although it was really chilly the water clarity made it nice to swim in.  The bike course was very difficult, a relentless rolling course.  Finally, I did not think the run was as challenging as others had warned me about – I found the Triple T run course to be much more challenging.  The only thing I was not fond of was the transition area – LONG.  I did not enjoy it at all after the swim with a sky high heart rate.

In an odd way I am grateful for the poor performance.  When I am in the midst of a less then stellar performance I tend to have a very tough time staying positive about the race.  I definitely encountered that on the bike.  By the time I hit T2, I was pretty frustrated.  Fortunately I started the run and trucked along at a pretty good pace.  I managed to work out my frustration by about mile 2 of the run, and actually started to enjoy myself.

My 243 average power (261 normalized) was pretty low, I would be somewhat disappointed with that for a Half, let alone an Olympic distance.  After looking at my week of training, I’m pretty sure I left my legs in my workouts.   Between the Tuesday group ride I did, my run with Matt (10+ miles FAST), and then Thursdays ride – left me with not a lot for biking.  Even though my TSB on Saturday was +4.6, my overall TSS was really high for the week, at least compared to my long term load.  I didn’t do real great at Elkhart Lake, but I was definitely a rock star in training last week.

This week will be a fairly easy one, a couple of hard efforts to keep the freshness up – with a focus on getting to High Cliff with a TSB of +0 and a flat, to slightly rising CTL, and then do my best at High Cliff.  No predictions on time or result, but just the best I can do.

Did a 4k LCM swim tonight, 1-2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2-1 @ 1:30 base tonight.  It was my first LCM swim of the year so of course I felt like I was drowning the whole time.

All I need to make it official is a Gym Class Hero certificate from Matt.