78 < 92 but 22 > 18

I went on a bike ride today. It was the fastest bike ride of my life.

I recently got some advice from Coach Amy about cadence on the bike. She suggested that my 90-100 rpm was possibly too high and that suggests moving to 75-85 rpm.

Today, my goal was to both complete the workout as well as to see what 75-85 rpm felt like. It felt great, I completed my workout and I shattered my usual average racing speed by over 2 mph and my average workout speed by over 4 mph!

The workout was simple: 30 minutes warm up, two 20 minute intervals at race effort with 10 minute breaks, and a steady cool down long enough to reach 2 hours. I went out to the South Mopac loop and got to it.

The warm up was just that. I kept it easy, didn't pay attention to speed, cadence, or aero; just relaxed and enjoyed the morning air. It looked like rain. When it was time to go, I dropped down and hammered it out. Everything felt great and keeping 75-85 rpm allowed me to turn a bigger gear. I was climbing hills over 20 mph, a first for me.

After the intervals, I took an easy cruise through the Circle C neighborhood. Nice houses but a little too white-bread for me.

The Rookie Race Report

Sunday was The Rookie Triathlon at the Texas Ski Ranch outside of New Braunfels. It was a beautiful day and the crowd was out for the first race in the Texas Tri Series.

We had a gang competing: six of us total. Me and ol' Reese; it was Reese's first race of the season and he did very well. Four people were doing their first race: congrats to Robbie, Elizabeth, Kristy and Audrey for finishing their first triathlon.

The day went fairly well. The 300m swim was long by all accounts. I was happy with my swim, but without a good measurement, it is tough to tell exactly how it went.

I had a smooth T1 and felt great heading out on the bike. A couple miles in I made what turned out to be a significant error. I had forgotten to take a pre-race gel so I decided to take it early on the bike. Since it was a short eleven mile ride my plan was to go all out and see what I could do. Hammering like that on the bike and trying to eat that gel just ended up leaving goo in my throat and giving me a stomach ache. Then I sucked down way too much water trying to get it to settle. By the time I got off the bike, which wasn't very long, I was way too full of water and had a sour stomach.

I was very happy with my bike split of 33:45, but heading into T2, things kinda fell apart. I was wearing a new pair of bike shoes. I had not practiced flying dismounts in them yet (rookie mistake at The Rookie Triathlon I guess). My right foot got stuck in my shoe just as I was dismounting. Then my brother came flying in off his bike wearing nothing but a speedo. This resulted in an extremely clumsy dismount on my part, cursing my shoe and Robbie gross @$$ in my face. I ended up carrying my bike upside down to the rack. All the same, I was in and out of T2 in 0:51, not too bad.

Off I went, over hydrated and over nutritioned, into a balls out two mile run. Seconds in, my insides turned to rock, my stomach went into my throat and walking actually crossed my mind. I was forced to slow my pace for the first mile until my body relaxed a bit. A mile is not generally a huge deal except that was half of the run in this case. After the turn I was able to press the pace a bit. Nothing like I was shooting for but I was able to finish stronger than I started. Run split was 13:29, slower than I would have liked, not as slow as it felt.

Final time of 56:20, 58th overall, 8th in my age group. Huge props to Resse for a smoking 53:07 time, 45th overall, 5th in his age group. Cousin Elizabeth did well at 1:15:46, 4th in her age group. Brother Robic smoked it in his first triathlon at 1:01:50.

CapTex is next. This time, Olympic distance.