Internal Mono(b)log

Now that’s one sexy looking bike helmet!

Odin: Presentation – Orbea.

I’m fortunate that my GP is athletic and “gets it”.

How to Choose A Sport Med Doc

Peter Reid’s Triathlon Training Tips | Active.com.

Great read… definitely worth the 2 minutes to read and digest it.

I can hardly believe that its been so long since the Milton tri. On one hand it seems like forever ago, on the other its still so fresh in my mind that it seems like yesterday. Such a dichotomy! 🙂

Milton was my 1st tri. Sure I’d completed each of the events individually (many times at significantly longer distances) but this was my 1st experience stitching them all together, racing the combined event, and dealing with the transitions.

What a BLAST! I had SO much fun it’s silly!

I’d planned on a full race report, but at this point, I don’t think it makes sense anymore.

My results:

I placed 31/64 in my age group in the swim.  Middle of the pack.. ok with it, but can do better.  Started the swim wayyy too hot and had to really slow down to regather myself and find my stroke.  Once I was in the zone I felt good, but had to overcome a moment of initial near-panic and self-doubt.

11/64 on the bike – destroyed.  Happy with this.  There were a lot of people blocking and drafting on the bike course, which frustrated me, but I still had fun.  My bike time could have been better if it hadn’t been for blocking and for dropping my chain and having to stop to fix it.

35/64 on the run – wasn’t very happy with this.  Need to do more bricks and more speed work on my runs.

Great weather, great fun.  Happy with 1st time out for sure.

Today’s ride was a 3 hour, MAP (max aerobic power) heart-rate zone 3 ride.   Not having really planned and not knowing where to go, I did the lakeshore toward Burlington route that I’d previously done.  It’s a good ride, with generally good roads and generally good traffic.  I forgot to start runkeeper on my phone until I was already part way back, but here’s a view of a snippet of my ride @ runkeeper.com (add about 5k out on lakeshore from the where I started recording and turn the route into an “out and back” (rather than just “back”) you get the full picture).

On this ride, I’d planned a nutrition experiment: In my speedfil I had just water, in each of 2 waterbottles I had 1 packet of HornetJuice and 1/2 scoop of Carbo-pro. For primary fuel, I had a flask of Hammer Gel Espresso and for electrolytes (this is the real experiment part) I used SaltStick salt tabs.  Because it wasn’t super-hot and I didn’t feel like I was sweating a lot, I decided to do 1 tab every 45 minutes.  Spread the 2 waterbottles evenly over the ride, and drink water generally when riding.  This is a change from my normal protocol of 1 HornetJuice, 1 Carbo-Pro and 1 scoop of EFS or other electrolyte sport-drink.  My thinking is that this approach allows me to hydrate without electrolytes or fuel.  Generally, this protocol seemed to work pretty well.  Definitely an experiment that I’ll continue to work with.

I also made a discovery on this ride – completely unrelated to the nutrition protocol experiment… well, maybe not completely unrelated… Ok.. on with it:

I ride, when training, with bib-style cycling shorts.

They are super comfortable and I love the feel of my Sugoi Bib shorts: they’re so comfortable and padded just right. But!  When you need to pee, and you don’t want to take off your jersey, and the shoulder straps, and pull down the shorts (and like today, sometimes there just isn’t time!) a much easier way to approach the problem, and sorry ladies, this probably only works for guys, is to pull up one of the legs until you can access your plumbing and pee through the stretched out leg hole.  So simple and efficient 🙂

Went for my 1st OW swim since Milton last week (oh yea! still owe you a race report for Milton… will write it tonight!), and noted a few small nicks in my wetsuit.  Probably from fingernails or something during T1.  Regardless, want to get them patched before they get worse.

Steve Fleck over at Nineteen Wetsuits pointed me at their repair instructions.  Good reference to have handy!  Thanks Steve!

Nineteen Wetsuits | Repairing Fingernail Cuts on Your Wetsuit.

How To Analyze Your Own Swim Stroke.

With thanks, from competitor.com, a nice intro.  I’ve done this.  Definitely worthwhile.  While not as good as live 1-on-1 coaching, if you can’t afford coaching or it isn’t available to you, recording your swim and analyzing it or sharing it online for comment, provides a really inexpensive and useful resource.

“like” PROBAR on Facebook  and tell them I sent you! For each “like” they send 1 bar to undernourished in 3rd world! A great product doing amazing outreach! What’s not to like?

Do you bike train with a power meter?  If you can afford to get one, I strongly recommend it.  Heart-rate is ok, but it’s decoupled from the level of effort you’re putting out and just time and perceived intensity is way too subjective.

If you are training with a power meter, I encourage you to checkout Golden Cheetah: Cycling Performance Software for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

It’s an open-source analytics package for cycling power data.  It provides a LOT of great information AND it’s FREE!

Jordan Rapp Wins ‘EPIC’ Inaugural Leadman 250 | First Endurance

Really nice race recap/review of the Leadman 250.