Icebreaker Tri

Smiles on our faces but sadness in our hearts for the first triathlon of the season (and first for my 12 year old daughter) on a mid-30's temperature day here in the upper midwest.

I competed in the sprint division (400y/13.3mi/3.1mi) finishing 7th overall and 4th in the 20-49 age group.

My daughter did the supersprint (200y/5.3mi/1mi) and was #4 woman and #1 in her 19U age group! We joked that she is going to retire from competitive triathlon now that she has finished on top.

But we were missing our sherpa (my wife) today because she was out of state planning her mothers (daughter's grandmother) funeral.

The Icebreaker triathlon aka the "I tri for pie" triathlon gives out a slice of pie to the competitors after the race. Yum!

First Outdoor Ride

Boy was it a nice day today. Time to get the bike outside and go for a ride. I had a 1:20 ride on my training plan so I pumped up the tires on my road bike found all my gear (helmet, gloves, bike kit) and headed out.

I was a little worried about how the roads were going to be. There is still a lot of sand on our street from the winter. The street sweeper had gone through my street earlier in the week, but there was still a bunch there.

The route I take has some pretty wide shoulders and they turned out to be fine. There was some sand at some of the intersections but most of it was just fine. I was debating before I left whether I should wear my bike jacket or not. I decided to wear it, but I soon regretted that decision.

I was sweating something fierce. I debating calling my wife to have her come and get my jacket but in the end I just sucked it up. The temps were in the 50s and the sun was shining. I really had nothing to complain about and just drank some extra water.

There was quite a bit of wind today out of the south, so the first part of my ride was slightly downhill and downwind. I was feeling great. Once I made the turn back south it was dead into the wind and also where all the hills were and it was a struggle. I couldn't even get much speed on the downhills.

It was a good ride, felt awesome to have the wind on my face again. I was worried about the power I was going to be able to put out today with the fact that I have been riding with flat pedals for the last few months. But upon review of my data, I am putting out the same power I did a year ago on a similar route. So maybe I haven't regressed as much as I thought. I also didn't have much knee pain either so maybe the leg strengthening is helping.

Once I got home, my daughter wanted to go out. So I changed my shirt and off we went back out for another ride. This time it was a much more relaxed pace as I followed behind her and coached her on changing gears and increasing her cadence some.

It was a lot of fun riding with her. After 2:15 of riding my butt was sore! I haven't been on my road bike in over 6 months and I haven't been on any bike that long since last summer, so I am just not used to it yet. Looking forward to so more riding.

Lakewalk Running....Sort of

So I felt good, and the weather was nice so I decided to run today. I dropped the kid off at the Y for her swim team practice and I headed down to Canal Park to do a run on the Lakewalk. It was a bit cool, and there are still ice chunks on the lake. It was really pretty actually.

So I begin my run. There is still some piles of snow on lakewalk at the start so I am on a dirt trail for the first 1/4 mile, then I get to the point where there is a fence blocking access to the Lakewalk. It had been pushed aside so I ran around it and kept going. The Lakewalk has been hit hard by various storms the last couple of years and apparently they tore the whole thing up. I ran around 3 more barriers before I got to the top of the hill at London Road. I had no idea it was closed.

So I went out for a while more, then came back and ran a different route back to canal park. This one took me by the Portland Malt Shoppe. Oh man I love this place. Huge malts made the old fashioned way.

I didn't stop though, had to keep running and I finished up my 4 miles with a continued sore leg. So frustrating.

State Swim Meet

The Minnesota Masters SCY state swim meet is a two day affair. I had a very busy schedule planned for this swim meet. I was swimming 4 events each day, plus I knew I would be swimming in some relays too.

Saturday had the 200 Free, the 50 Free, 50 Back, and the 1650 Free. Sunday had the 500 Free, 100 Free, 100 Back, and 1000 Free. So not only did I have a lot of events, but a lot of long distance events too.

So on Saturday I also swam 3 relays, including anchor leg of 400 free relay where I got out of lane 6 and onto the lane 4 block for the 1650.

The 200 was great. Smooth long and strong for opening 100 then increase the tempo for last 100 and set a 12s PR!

The 50s were just meh.I actually managed to TIE my 50 free PR down to the hundredths of a second.

The 1650 was good. Felt strong the whole way. Tried not to go out too fast. Told my counter I wanted 51s 50's. I had a few of those but the rest were lower. In the end, I had a 1 minute PR in the mile.

Super happy with my day.

Sunday I woke up this morning SORE. Wow, was my body tired. So my results were not as good as Saturday. No PR's on Sunday. I swam the races the way I wanted to, and put the effort in that I wanted to, it just didn't result in the times I wanted.

Overall I am SUPER happy with my weekend. I did really well on day one, and came pretty close to PR's on day two. I swam A LOT of distance which I don't do in practice, and did pretty consistently. I swam 2200 yards of competition swimming on Saturday (plus some warmup). That's just a bit less than my normal swim workout! 

Elliptical and IM 70.3 Texas

With the rain here today and my injury and no desire to drive downtown to the Y, I hit up the elliptical at home. I adjusted the resistance until I could get my HR into the 140's, and I did a legs only elliptical workout.

No issues with this today. My groin muscle bothered me right at the very start, but within a minute it was fine and I didn't feel a thing the rest of the workout. Now a few minutes later, it is still feeling good.

Following along the IM Texas 70.3 coverage while doing this workout and getting me in the spirit. But man those guys are FAST! 25mph on the bike for 56 miles and then 6:00 miles after that. So fun to see talent like that. But I also like watching the middle and back of the pack too where I would be. :-)

Zwifting

I have been using a virtual riding program from time to time this winter while riding my bike on the trainer. Sometimes my training just calls for riding without any intervals or such. This is a great time to just use a program like Zwift. (BTW, this can also be used by runners on a treadmill)

Zwift can be used to control the trainer so the resistance matches the terrain that you are riding on. Or you can use a predefined program to control the resistance. Today that is what I did. I had a 10 minute warm up, a 40 minute constant power, and 10 minute cool down in my Training Peaks plan.

So when Zwift imports a workout from TP, apparently it takes the warmup and cooldown and does them as a ramp. Odd but fine.

Also interestingly, Zwift chose an Innsbruck Austria course which featured a non-stop hill climb for the first 45 minutes of my ride. So I watch the screen and cruising up this 9% grade at 4mph. At one point during the warm up portion I got passed by a runner. It made for an amusing ride.