Riding the course

        This last week I got out and rode close to half of the bike course with Jeff, my friend who is doing the event with me. The full course is 56 miles, and I got over 30miles of the course, and pretty much all of the major climbs done on that ride. The course is an out and back, but the back doesn't bring you back to the swim, it takes you into down town Boise, where T2 is waiting for you so you can then run on the fairly flat Greenbelt along the Boise river.

             The training ride went pretty well. There's actually part of the course that you're not supossed to ride on before the event because it goes onto private, corporate, property and they get all butt hurt when you come hauling rubber, dodging cars on their property during buisness hours. But it's very easy to get around, you just stay on the main road. The only reason I can see why they chose to go out onto the property is to add a little bit of more distance, to get the full 56 miles, and maybe a little technical stuff with multiple turns on a flat section of the course. But really, for the training purpose, it doesn't matter. The bigger issue is that I got all the climbs in.

              Jeff and I started ~4 miles from the swim start. According to the elevation map, that is mostly all down hill anyways coming out of Lucky Peak Resevior. We started with one of the 2 main climbs that we will have to face. It's a steady climb, but wasn't too terrible. I was able to keep a decent 14mph pace on the hill. After that hill is a little bit of a down hill before it flatens out and then gets a few rolling hills here and there. The next major climb is around mile 18 on the course, and dear God, is it a toughy.

             The biggest climb is up and over a good size hill while you pass the gravel pit. Because of the counture of the road on the hill, you can never tell where it's going to end until you reach the very top. It seems like you just climb,......... and climb,........ and climb. At one point I did start to wonder when it was going to end. You just climb higher and higher, round a corner that you think for sure would lead you over the top only to see more hill going up. Here's the elevation map so you can see what I'm talking about. Look at mile 18 and look how that line goes up almost vertically? Yeah that's the climb I'm talking about. I guess so long as you don't get a flat or other bike issue on that part of the course, then it's not too terrible. It's just a part of the course where you try to just not spend too much energy. The plus side is that there is an aid station after the climb. The crappy part is after the turn around you have a 90* left hand turn to make, and then you hit another decent steady climb.

              Maybe it was bad for me because we had to come to a near complete stop to check for traffic before we could make the turn into a hill, but man that wasn't fun. Having no momentum and trying to get up a steady hill like that was almost as bad as the biggest hill. The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. My low back did start to cramp up on me and force me out of the aero position, but other wise nothing to really write home about. I do need to mention that I don't have a power meter or heart rate monitor, so I just have to base everything off of my perceived excertion and my cadence. This makes those fake flats, as I call them, a little more deceptive. I try to not worry about my over all speed, but rather just how I feel while I'm in the saddle, and what my cadence is. I've been trying really hard to keep my cadence higher, around the mid 90's for my rides. This puts me into an easier gearing, usually one up on my cassette, and I'm hoping that it will then just save my legs a little bit for the run. Once I get onto the run, I will have the best judge of how I'm doing, as it's the most familiar territory for me. So for this year, it'll be a little easier on the bike to save some for the run so I can finish strong, Vs a stronger bike and loosing it on the run.

              Which brings me to my last observation on the bike that I noticed yesterday. Yesterday I went for a ride while the kids were sleeping. I was hoping to get a 20+ miler in for the day. I wanted to kind of push the pace a little bit, but keeping the cadence higher versus worrying about my speed. The ride was really good, and as I was coming close to home I noticed that going past my house for another mile and then coming back would give me a 40K (just under 25mi, and the olympic distance for the bike) so I did just that. When I got home, I quickly placed the bike up against the van and then grabbed my running shoes and went for a one mile run, turning my ride into a "brick" workout.

                I've done several of the brick workout before, but this was the first time of doing a brick while not attached to both a trainer for the bike and a treadmill for the run, and it was totally different. My legs were definetly more jello after this ride, but the typical shin stiffness that I've experience before was never there. This did make my run easier. I had some stiffness here and there, but nothing very big or very painful. When I did the other bricks, I would get out of the saddle and stretch out my calves and the rest of my body as I could while still on the pedals, but this time I didn't. It was a last minute decison to run, so I never thought about stretching out. The other big thing that I noticed was how slow I felt like I was running. It was an almost out of body experience running after the ride, and it felt horribly slow. Hitting my watch after the mile run showed that I had pushed out that mile at a 7:10 pace. That's a scary thought to me. I pushed out a 7:10 mile without really trying after the ride. That was way better than I thought, and makes me wonder where I should be. I'm thinking that an 8-8:30 pace for the first mile or two after the bike and then pick up the pace as I see and feel fit. With the last mile or two really pushing the pace to finish strong.

              My swiming is still chugging along, and my running is going smooth. I did order some tires off of Ebay after I wrote my last blog, and got nervous when I discovered that I bought them from a Taiwanese buisness. They still haven't shown up yet, but should be here any time, and the seller assures me that there won't be any duty tax that I'll have to pay before I can get my tires. I need to get some open water swims in, which I plan to do this week. Last week I missed an open water session, but used a kick board propped up on my water bottle as a sighting device while swiming in the pool. As of today, I have 3.5 weeks until the event, and I can't wait, but am also nervous. If I think about how close it is, then I get nervous; but if I think just about the event, then I'm excited. I honestly just want it to be here so I can get it over with. I know that these last 3.5 weeks aren't going to make a huge performance advantage for the race, so all I can do now is just try to stay healthy and keep everything loose.