I found a guy from my church, who is also the dad of one of my daughter's friends, who is somewhat into the idea of training for triathlons. He has done a few in his life, but none recently, and he still regularly does 5 and 10K runs. He was planning on trying a triathlon later this year in Illinois, when he is visiting his parents, so he needs to train. This created an opportunity for me to have a training buddy, at least on the bike. So today we went for an hour-long mountain-bike ride which was about half on-road and half off. It was very enjoyable to have someone to chat with on that long of a ride. Somehow, we averaged 12 mph on this ride, so that gave me some hope that I am not totally screwed for the real thing. It was not physically debilitating, but we did keep up the pace pretty much near the limit of our abilities for most of the ride. Okay, so 12 mph isn't going to set any records but there were tree roots and rocks and stuff all over the place, so I assume we will be able to pick up the pace a bit if the course is all road.
This was the first long ride I have done outside this year. One thing I discovered is that I need some gloves with padded palms. My fingers were kind of numb after a little while. I also experienced for the second time in a year a problem that I might encounter in a race that could be quite bothersome. My eye gets something in it that just feels like acid. I don't know if I am sweating out all the peppers I eat as pepper spray sweat or if there are chemicals on my handlegrips or what, but my eyes get so painful that I can hardly keep them open and there is serious pain involved. I suppose I can douse myself with water if this happens in a race, but dang, it feel like I got maced. Anyone have any ideas about that?
I'm looking forward to more good rides all summer. This was probably my first real endurance workout at my target heart rate (if I was even getting there) that I have been on all year. I am encouraged that I might actually be able to do this.
I think I will need to buy a heart monitor to really get my aerobic fitness where it is supposed to be. I'll look into that soon. If I focus on that for a few months, I'm sure my performance will improve dramatically.
1 comment:
That biking wasn't too bad. On the mountain bike to work I can only average about 13 mph. Of course on the way to work there are two Alpine ascents, at least it feels that way. Pretty good hills. The one actually goes up, then down then goes way up.
Last summer on regular type roads, on my Mountain bike I was pushing 17 MPH. Switched to Road and BAM pushing 19 MPH. So, I believe you will see some improvement, espcially because in most triathlons, Mooseman included, triathaletes are not trying to prove they are Billy Goats. The local Half Ironman triathlon in Morgantown, WV has altered there bike because they felt they were going to start losing participants due to one hill in the middle of the bike. I am not saying triathletes are wimps, I am saying they don't have to prove they can do a Category 1 climb between a 2 mile swim and marathon.
I saw the elevation changes on the Mooseman and you would be hard pressed to find roads in West Virginia that flat, for that matter in Pennsyslvania either. So Shawn that means nothing but up from here or not up, whatever way you want to look at it.
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