Friday, February 12, 2010

Super swim, but no spinning love

The original plan was to get up at the regular time, hop on the bike, then go to yoga, then swim, then pick up my race package. Then I thought that was an awfully ambitious agenda on a Friday before a long weekend. Monday is Family day in Alberta.

So while Linda was off to her massage, then yoga, while I got my act together. Well, sort of got it together on the bike. Right now my body is loving the swim and run, but seems to have forgotten about this spin thing. But that's ok, since we are months from riding outside. As long as I thought about it very carefully, I could spin, and once just barely made it to 120. But as soon as I stopped thinking about it actively, my legs starting doing squares, or octagons, or something with odd bits of jerkiness. At one point it felt like the cranks were different lengths. I did a really long warm up, about 35 minutes, with gradual spin ups, and working on being smooth, but it never really came together. I did one thing of the main set, starting in an easy gear, maintain 90, and go a gear harder every 90 seconds, for 9 minutes total. That nearly finished me just by itself. I did a bit more spin, and cool down for 60 minutes total.

After lunch I went over to the pool and found it nearly empty. This Friday afternoon empty pool thing is great! I had a lane to myself for my entire 1.25 hr swim. Warmup, drills, longer intervals with the easy hard thing happening. For a while I was in sync with the guy in the next lane. He was doing breast stroke easy, and going pretty good, then he'd power through 50 m of fast freestyle with paddles. When I was doing 50 easy 50 moderate, he oh so gradually pulled away from me. I'd pass on our easy, then he'd pull away on the fast. When I was doing 25 easy 75 hard I was gradually pulling away from him.

My inner shark showed up part way through the swim. He seems fascinated by the flip turns. They are coming along pretty good and work most of the time. We cruised along together, him laughing at my recovery freestyle, which feels slow and clunky, and grooving on the fast stuff. For the final 200 m fast, I managed it in 3:30, which is probably the fastest I've ever done that distance. After getting my breath back, I cruised along for a while just pulling and relaxing. Today I had a great feel for the water. Even the fist drill felt fast; I could feel my forearm working with the water.

From there I went downtown to pick up the race package for the Hypo Half. It took a while to figure out the bag, since they'd sort of turned it inside out and stuffed it into one of the smaller pockets. It's a fairly handy tote bag with lots of pockets, handles, mesh, even a removable pocket. I picked up some Gu for the race. My thinking is a Gu before, at 5, 10, and 15 K. I'll bring along one of those fist sized containers with water to wash down the Gu.

It's a bit frustrating that the bike isn't going well, but it has gone well in the past, and I'm sure it will go well in the future. I'm not worried about it just now. I'm happy the run is going well. At this point I think I'm in good shape for the Hypo Half on Sunday. The weather looks nice, just above 0 C.

3 comments:

  1. Good luck on the half! We'll expect a detailed race report. And that's a lot of GU, mister. You must have a higher tolerance than I do.

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  2. If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that you're not a robot - very annoying at times, but unfortunately true! And hey, that is also the challenge and joy and frustration all rolled into one of triathlon - trying to get the damn 3 disciplines to all work together at THE SAME TIME!!!

    Great swimming though eh :)

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  3. i didn't know you were doing the hypo half! have a great race!!!

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