Ignorance is Bliss, Pt. 2
At the risk of alienating/irritating/embarrassing all my bike racer friends... triathlon training is now in full swing for me. Basically this means I am even busier than ever, I'm even hungrier if that's possible, I'm taking at least two showers a day, and I'm carting around like three times as much stuff everywhere.
It also means I am riding my TT bike a lot, and prompting certain experts to slow down their cars and roll down their windows and prolongedly tease me for riding uphill in my aero bars. And it means I splurged on a disc wheel on ebay, then rode around the neighbourhood trying to get a photo with me and the wheel and the bike in it all at once. Best attempt is at right.
And, I am loving all the running. I even dug out my Charlottesville 10-Miler t-shirt from 7 years ago and started wearing it again. It has paint on it but I don't care.
My cycling tan lines are virtually gone.
I realized this morning that I am no longer getting gallons of water stuck in my ears every time I go to the pool. I interpreted this as a certain sign of improvement in my technique. This certain sign inspired me to get out my calculator... this morning I did 24 laps, it's a 33 1/3 yard pool. That's like totally far! I did almost a mile!
But:
It took me 40 minutes including rest.
I had flippers on for, um, some of those laps.
And a half-ironman swim is equal to about 31 laps.
If you're good you do that distance in somewhere around a half an hour (for morale reasons I am not looking at any results for a little while so that estimate might be on the low side for the women but you get the idea).
AND you aren't allowed to race in flippers!
...5 weeks of swim training under my belt so far, 5 weeks to Cancun, 3 months to SilverMan. I should be O.K.!?
It also means I am riding my TT bike a lot, and prompting certain experts to slow down their cars and roll down their windows and prolongedly tease me for riding uphill in my aero bars. And it means I splurged on a disc wheel on ebay, then rode around the neighbourhood trying to get a photo with me and the wheel and the bike in it all at once. Best attempt is at right.And, I am loving all the running. I even dug out my Charlottesville 10-Miler t-shirt from 7 years ago and started wearing it again. It has paint on it but I don't care.
My cycling tan lines are virtually gone.
I realized this morning that I am no longer getting gallons of water stuck in my ears every time I go to the pool. I interpreted this as a certain sign of improvement in my technique. This certain sign inspired me to get out my calculator... this morning I did 24 laps, it's a 33 1/3 yard pool. That's like totally far! I did almost a mile!
But:
It took me 40 minutes including rest.
I had flippers on for, um, some of those laps.
And a half-ironman swim is equal to about 31 laps.
If you're good you do that distance in somewhere around a half an hour (for morale reasons I am not looking at any results for a little while so that estimate might be on the low side for the women but you get the idea).
AND you aren't allowed to race in flippers!
...5 weeks of swim training under my belt so far, 5 weeks to Cancun, 3 months to SilverMan. I should be O.K.!?
Labels: enjoy the blog, geek
posted by Courtenay at 8/09/2007
4 Comments:
where's silverman? and don't tell me it's in some exotic locale. I need to pick more exciting races.
for the first time in all my 28 years, i will be heading to VEGAS for this race.
gasp. and potential ew.
it better be a good one!
Just a lil note on swimming....
As a runner your workouts are usually shorter than your event if you run 10k and above.
As a cyclist your workout is always longer than a crit but around the same distance if not a bit shorter than a road race.
For a swimmer your workouts are around 3-5k and up to 10k if you are a pure swimmer compared to the longest event of 500yrds. It never made sense to me. But for some reason to be efficient in the water you need to put in distances that just dwarf the distance of your event. BTW when I turned into a distance swimmer with 1k+ championship events I had to do 15k Saturdays and double workout 7k days. Makes an 8 hour day on the bike look simple. You would just get home unable to move and too tired to pass out, just a incoherent blob on the couch unable to make food and laboring to change the channel on the remote....
This isn't a lesson, more of a reflection. It just never makes sense looking back.
Swimming with fins and paddles is the shit. Losing the tan lines is cool, I got some weird looks the other day when getting ready to jump in. But the looks went away when I was able to stand on a kick board underwater and then pop it up onto the deck with perfect placement.....
my biking tan lines are basically gone too. :(
Darnnnn.
-dano
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