Well my writing time last week was devoted to documenting the results of my wetsuit testing, so I didn’t get around to doing the weekly update, so this one is a twofer.
While I seem to have solved the swim issue, my bike fit continues to be a work in progress, after playing around with shortening the reach and it feeling initially very good and giving me good results in a couple hard two plus hour time trial efforts, I was stymied two weeks in a row in attempting to do 20 minute best effort tests. As a result of that, I dug around slowtwitch and found my 2011 Critique Me Thread, where none other than Paulo Sousa, gave me a lot of great advice. I credit that advice and it’s bike fit as being a very strong contributor to my biking break through in 2011. As I’ve documented quite well, since that bike was wrecked in late 2011, I have been more or less searching for that feeling on the bike. I spent some time reviewing that thread, and comparing it to pictures of my bike, and did my best to recreate it last week – basically more forward, more reach, more drop then what I’ve been doing for a couple years – it was the position I race at Racine this weekend – and I was tickled with how I felt during the race. It leaves me feeling like I finally got the position I’ve been searching for after a long search. We’ll see over the next couple of weeks how it goes, but prior to Racine, I had the bike setup that way for exactly 45 minutes of riding, and I didn’t feel like I was losing power or sustainability in the position as the race progressed.
Week 1
Monday – The typical easy run, and a swim – mainset 12×200 SCM @ 2:55 pull – I held sub 2:45 for all of them
Tuesday – Easy ride, quality run with a mainset of 4×5′ @ Daniel’s I-pace, with a 4 minute jog
Wednesday – First wetsuit test session (Profile Design Wahoo) and an easy run
Thursday – 6×3′ @ 350 watts on the bike plus an easy run
Friday – Second wetsuit test (Xterra Vendetta SLO) and a long run with 5×10′ @ HIM pace
Saturday – easy ride and easy run
Sunday – 2.5 hours on the bike with an aborted 20′ best effort – kind of a bleh ride, easy run
Week 2
Monday – Zero
Tuesday – Shorter than usual easy ride + a run with 3x{2×2′ HARD (1′ jog)} (2′ Jog)
Wednesday – Third wetsuit test session (ROKA Full), easy run
Thursday – shorter than normal easy ride, with some efforts at 95%, easy run
Friday – Final wetsuit test (ROKA Sleeveless + Vendetta Small) + shortened easy run
Saturday – 45 minute bike with some race pace efforts + 15′ run with 5′ race pace
Sunday – Racine 70.3
I’ll endeavor to write up my thoughts on Racine and the plans from here.
