Gearing Up for the Tri season

It’s been a spendy few weeks. I guess I didn’t post on here about the new roof rack for the bikes that we bought. After almost losing my bike off the top of the car, I ordered up a Thule rack for the car. It’s definitely a very good rack and I worked at it over two days to come up with a configuration that would hold 4 bikes, fork mounted and 2 wheels.

I had wanted to buy a new helmet but have really been having trouble with spending 170-210 for it. So I’ve been watching out for deals. Bike Nashbar got my attention early last week with a big coupon for 21% on any single item. I went to their site to see if they had either of the helmets I liked. Sure enough, there is the Bell Volt. It’s an older model (does it matter?) and is not the color I would choose if I had to pick from a selection of colors (Metallic Sepia/Copper) but I couldn’t pass up the price. $89.99. I already know that it fits, its comfortable and well vented so it was an easy decision.

While I was on the site I also decided to check out what shoes they had. I’ve been really been unhappy with the ones I’ve been using. Some days are better than others but they need to go. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to realize that they are too narrow.

They had a pair of Shimano Tri shoes. I was happy with the Shimano shoes I had previously. I can return these if I don’t like them for just the cost of shipping. So I ordered these up as well.

Until they get scuffed up a bit, Genine will constantly tease me about them looking like tap shoes.

For the record, I did to a bit of research trying to find a better shoe. The one that was most interesting to me was a shoe by Northwave.

The fit was pretty good for someone with a bit wider foot or looking for a larger toe box. I may have bought them if they didn’t have to special order them for me, or if they had a guarantee of some sort. There were a couple things about the build that was odd to me that made me question their durability. I asked around the forums trying to get some feedback about the brand and didn’t get much.

Because the scheduled bike workout keep getting longer. I realized it is time to try out saddles again. There are other saddles out there that I want to try, it’s just tough to find a bike shop that has them. Then you need to find a shop that has the time and interest to allow you to put it on your bike for a test ride, either on the trainer or outdoors. I thought the Adamo Race saddle that I used last year was pretty good but over the winter I set that up on Genine’s bike. I don’t think I’m going to get that one back.

I definitely want a saddle with a cutout so I checked out the demo programs online. I rented 2 saddles from Trisports.com. The Adamo Podium and the Selle SanMarco Mantra. I tried both of them on the trainer before Saturday’s 2.5 hour ride. I put the Adamo on 2^nd and so that was what stayed on my bike to start the ride. I figured I’d switch after the first hour. Well that didn’t happen. I didn’t want to take the break to swap saddles, so the Adamo got a 2.5 hour test ride. I liked it. It’s not perfect but it’s much better than everything I’ve used this winter. Monday night I’ll probably swap for the Adamo Race saddle from Genine’s bike. That way she can try the Podium and I can remember what the race version was like. There isn’t much difference but only one way to be sure. I have to send the Demo saddles back Thursday. I have a feeling an Adamo will be on my bike again this season.

Here are the 5 saddles I've tried.

This weekend’s workouts were good. Genine rode on her day off Friday. 36+ miles in the cold rain. She’s much tougher than I am when it comes to the weather. I did my 2500m swim Saturday morning while Genine was at Intensati. Then when she left for work, I drove over to the Round Valley loop to do my 2.5 hours. My goal here was to stay in my HR zone of course but to also think about my pacing. I need to start to get a feel for what kind of effort I can hold over certain lengths of time.

I’ve always considered this loop to be a perfect training ride for the Mooseman course but I’d never really looked to see how they match up. After 40 miles, I started to think that maybe this course is actually tougher than Mooseman’s Olympic course. Here are the profiles from Map my ride, I think they must be guessing on some of the elevation on the Round Valley loop as the start and finish aren’t at the same elevation.

Round Valley:

Mooseman

Columbia:

I'm not very good at looking at these graphs and deciding the difficulty. The big climb at Round Valley does seem to be a good approximation of the big climb at Mooseman tho'.

Sunday I was supposed to go into NYC to run a 10K with Todd. I wasn’t planning on racing this one but it was going to be another run to towards the 9+1 for the 2012 NYC Marathon. Unfortunately, Todd wasn’t going to be able to go. I decided that it wasn’t worth waking up early, gas and toll money plus the extra hours out of my day just for a training run in Central Park. Instead I ran my hour with Genine and some friends.

As I said before, the volume is starting to build. The good part about this is I can see that I’ve got a good chance at losing more weight before Timberman in August. That is if I can keep my eating in check. I found myself really loading up the calories in preparation for the bike ride and that continued after the ride as well. Sunday wasn’t much different. Seems that I was tired enough that I kept on munching on carbs. I need to put some serious effort into tracking my food intake and figure out what’s going to work.

Last week, I didn't wake up to do any morning workouts. Not enough sleep and I never caught up. As a result a couple of days I did my run in the evening with a short break before biking on the trainer. Not my ideal plan for an evening. So this morning I was in the pool at 5:30 and got my 3500m out of the way. So far so good this week.