Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Mixed Bag of Training Tricks (Sat. through Mon.)

So, it's a mixed bag when it comes to my training the past few days. I found out that I was overestimating how far I've been biking... but I also discovered that the pool is pretty much twice as long as I thought it was so I've been doing distances that are twice as long as I thought I was doing (so I'm not so super slow after all! Yay!) The good news on the biking front though is that I went to the bike shop (Orange Cycle - if you need to go and Thjis is working he was really helpful) on Friday and got clip in pedals and the shoes to go with it and a more comfortable saddle (along with some other gear like biking gloves so my hands don't hurt as much when I ride, tire changing stuff, etc.). I did a bike on Saturday and on Monday (today) and I am fast compared to before and am biking in harder gears because otherwise it's just too easy for training. Biking with pedals and clip in shoes makes everything so much more efficient that I did my normal route and then added a little over a mile in the same time it used to take to do the original route. I already liked the biking but now it's even better! I also found out that one of my neighbors is big into biking so I'm going to mosey over to her house sometime this week to chat with her a bit.

Sunday I did a 25 minute swim followed by a 20 minute walk run. The pool guy was there testing the chlorine levels and I asked him if he knew how long the pool was and he said "about 25 feet long in each direction"... I didn't quite believe him because I thought it was probably about 12 1/2 feet long, so I paced it off knowing that my foot is around 9 to 10 inches long and adding extra by taking a mid-size step and sure enough, it appears to be around 25 feet long (it might be a foot shy, but close enough). So I felt better about my times from the other day and boy did my workout seem a lot easier than normal! I had bought some triathlon specific clothing (i.e. you can swim, bike and run in it without having to change or add clothes) and tried it out. The shorts were a trip because they have a built in pad like regular bike shorts but not as bulky so it's not like running in a diaper after swimming... but they added boyancy in the pool so I had to adjust to that. Not sure they're as quick drying in the bike pad area as I thought they would be, but then again I went straight from the swim to the run without the biking in between (which probably would help get some of the water out) and it was rainy and cool out during my run. (Amanda asked me if I was going pee pee when I was talking to her after coming in from the workout because a little water was running down my leg.) But I definitely like the tri clothes better than trying to pull running clothes, etc. over a wet bathing suit.

This week's workouts are going to be a little different than usual (i.e. Monday is usually my day off, etc.) because we have voting in the National Election on Tuesday and Saturday through Monday morning I'll be in Atlanta for a different type of training (I'm the regional director for recruitment for the Southeast for my sorority - Alpha Xi Delta). So, I switched Saturday's workout to Monday and am going to try to split my Sunday workout into Saturday and Sunday (although I need to see if the hotel I'm staying at on Sunday has a pool) so I at least do something on those two days even if it's not as intense of a training session as usual. But, fear not my dear friends... tri training will happen!

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