faster

monday again. :-) weeks are flying by now. in the back of my head i sometimes wish we had another year of training before the event. but then when will we ever be ready?!


the resa finally got her new bike. its the same one i have just a bit smaller (56 rather than my 58) and as mine its 8 pounds lighter than she is used too. we took them out on our first ride a few days ago to shake out the twitchies. seems in pretty good condition - need to adjust some stuff of course to make it fit better, but otherwise ran smooth.

after a few adjustments we took them out yesterday for a 2 hour ride. all along i have told her how much she was going to like the bike - which is a bad move usually as she will find a way not to like something if i tell her she should like it. kinda stubborn i guess. :-) well, she was smiling pretty big as we road down the tow path. its a bit rutty here and there and mostly dirt or crushed fine limestone. so you are not doing your best times for sure - but there are very few stop signs and no cars and mostly flat. so a fun ride. i notice the mph creeping up as she takes her times in the front. soon we are riding about 3-5 mph faster than the old bikes and just chatting away. didnt even bother drafting, just rode side by side grinning at each other. we added an hour or more to the ride since it was so much fun.

we plan on riding this coming sunday in anger for the first time on the new guys. going to see what we can do a 100 miles in. shooting for under 5 hours including stops. will depend on the weather a bit, and the route is pretty hilly... but wow are these new bikes fun. we got the tank that fits between the aerobars set up and that makes drinking a ton easier too. now we can stuff our water bottles full of food! :-)

not much in other news. other than we swam our longest ever swim on sunday also. 3200 meters. so thats about 600 short of the event. we went very moderate. slow enough to never be remotely tired or out of breath - just had fun splashing around. did it in about 1:20ish. did some math on what we would have done in an ironman with a suit, no turning and maybe just a bit more effort and we think we could finish in 1:25ish. but our goal is to finish of course. no real reason now to think we wont. and that all along has been my biggest fear. also our cruising speed for running under a half marathon is now in the 9 minute per mile times. pretty big change from 12 minute miles about a year ago. :-)) and last of the bragging - as i will look back 4 weeks from now and hate the guy thats writing all this glowing love stuff. i weighed myself after a longer workout to see how much water dept i am in. 183. gads. about 35 down from my start weight a year and a half ago.

we are going to concentrate on getting our bike pace up for the next 8-9 weeks. thats going to be our strategy. to not go too hard on the swims and run and divert to the bike. we waffled quite a bit on that. whether to go with run heavy or bike heavy. the pros as we added them up came out to:

more running: probably be lighter for the event. better cardio shape. would probably help bike too by getting a better power to weight ratio.

more biking: less chance of injury ( other than of course a nasty wipeout ), good chance to see a ton of time on the last stage rather than busting to beat a bike cutoff.

in the end we figured we would rather get off the bike an hour earlier rather than be ready for a run which we might be both very stressed and very tired for.

plus we have new bikes!!! ( already resa is talking about a cervelo. *sigh* )



in other stuff - i have another question for all of you out there, what do you guys do for recovery? we currently soak our legs in cold water and try to eat a lot right after working out. other than that? ? ? ?



SCORES:

mentally: 10. wow. feel pretty darn great. even the food worries are starting to go away, we are both finding more things we can eat. so we will have quite the special needs and transition areas stocked up. feel faster in all three events from just a few months ago even. things are good.

physically: 10. no injuries, hard workouts are pretty easy on the new bikes and bodies. lol. feel great.

workouts: 10. was a harder than usual week, did all the workouts - did them if not in raging anger, at least briskly.

first ever clean sweep. never felt better.


:-)