Tri Tuesday

Yep...   its Tri Tuesday again.  This one was a whopper.  But first...   one more photo from the race on Sunday.

This one is fellow Tri NE club members Leslie and Luis and I before the race start.  I should stop standing next to taller people!

Ok onto Tri Tuesday....

as is tradition the day started with a GVP swim with Luis and I.  I was really tired this morning when the alarm went off at 445am.  But sleepiness is no excuse to dodge a workout, and when I say I'm going to be somewhere I'm there.  So I sleepily arrived at GVP at a little before six and got ready to get in the water.  Before we got in Luis said something to me about how he might want to do the 1.5 mile loop today but we figured we would swim the 1/2 mile out to the dock and then decide there.  We kept a very nice easy relaxed pace today which was great as thats the only speed I had available this morning.  When we arrived at the dock Luis said he wanted to go for the 1.5 mile loop.  Part of me wanted to say ok...  go for it.  I'll wait for you here and then swim the 1/2 mile back with the you as I was still feeling exhausted, but I didn't want to deter Luis from going for his first 1.5 mile swim.  So I sucked it up and went along.  At the 3/4 mile buoy we turned around and headed back for the beach.  Ben and friend who had left just after us caught up to us at this point and the four of us swam back to the beach as a loose pack.  When my watch signaled that there was a 1/2 mile to go still I think I groaned underwater.  I was just tired this morning.  But I just kept swimming until I made it to the beach.  In the end our relaxed pace meant we did the 1.5 miles in 52 minutes.  Not a bad swim in the end. 

After that it was back to home and back to work for the day, and then I headed out to the Providence Bicycle time trial course around 4pm to get my warmup lap in.  In the end I went for a 20 mile ride before the TT as I finished my warmup lap by 5pm and didn't want to stop that early and cool down so I tagged 6 more miles on so my ride would end around 530ish.  When I got back I was surprised at the size of the crowd at the TT.  There must have been 35 people there.  I've never seen it so crowded.  Definitely the largest TT yet.  Seemed like there were some new triathletes there as well as some new speedy roadies there too.  Word has apparently gotten out.  But the more the merrier.  Seemed like it took a long time before I started.  In fact I was the 21st person to start and there were quite a few people behind me too. 

I had high hopes going into today that my new aerobars were going to help me set a new PR tonight.  But during my warmup lap I realized just how strong the head and crosswinds were on the course today.  I'm not sure what my official time is but it felt slower today.  My average speed was a bit down and even the descents seems like they were not as fast as usual.  The wind somehow seemed to always be in my face today no matter how many right hand turns I made.  I asked around at the finish if others felt the same way.  Most of the people I talked to said the same thing.  So I'm expecting a lot of the times today to be a bit slower than the norm, but I'm curious to see if that will be true.

I managed to stay in my aerobars for the entire ride except for the climbs where there was no point.  I really need to adjust my deraileur though...  I had a lot of slippage today which was really pissing me off.  Every couple of revolutions of the crank my chain would slip on the cassette in the 3 middle gears of the cassette.  Very very annoying.  I'm sure I also lost a tiny bit of time to that too.  I passed a lot of people tonight though as there were lots of slower riders in front of me to pick off tonight.  However Luis who started only thirty seconds in front of me I never saw for the first time in all the TTs we've done together I was not able to pass him.  Way to go Luis!  Nice ride!  I suspect he'll be starting behind me during the TT any day now at this rate.

After the TT I threw my running gear on and got ready to head out for a run with the boys.  Our usual pack of Brad, Nick, Myself, and CJ formed up and we added Kevan and John C this week too.  The pace up the hill felt a little slow to me so Kevan and I went up front a little bit and picked it up a tad.  Then we picked it up again.  In the end we ran up the hill in 9:24 which doesn't sound all that fast... but for a hill that long and steep its a nice effort...   especially right off the bike.  Once we hit the flats we settled in to around an 8 minute pace.  Not long after that CJ came running up from the slower pack to join us.  And then what I call the "alpha male games" started.  Put three speedy runners together and you can pretty much count on at least one of those guys trying to push the pace.  So CJ would pick up the pace and Kevan and I would pick up to stay together.  We'd catch him...   then as a group we might slow down a tiny bit till another of us would surge ahead.  This became a game with one of us always pushing the pace.  In the end it was a high speed fartlek run with lots of fast intervals.  We started out a little slower at 8's but all of a sudden we'd be running 7's, 6:30s for a little bit and then slow back up a tad.  And then someone else would surge.  As we hit the 2.5 mile mark and turned back we picked it up again.  I was exhausted but I wasn't going to lose this game so I pressed onward and fought hard not to get dropped.  Which I'm happy to say I didn't!  This game went on the whole way back.  Our last mile (albeit a downhill one) we ran at 6:17.  Ugh!  I was beat!  6:17 on a day when all I'm doing is running five miles with the boys is fine...  but when you've already swam 1.5 miles and biked 34 (14 of which at peak effort) its pretty fricking tiring!  I was a big bucket of tired sweaty jello at the end of the run.  When I got home I considered putting a chair in the shower so I didn't have to stand up.   I'm exhausted now.  But I've hit the last of my hard effort workouts for the week.  I have to go away for the rest of this week and my schedule is going to be really tough so instead of trying to train around it I'll do some light training out there and call this a recovery week.  Right when I get back I'll do a giant 2 day block with a big brick / long run in it and then sort of taper for the YMCA sprint the following weekend.

On a funny note...   I wore all my Livestrong gear to the TT tonight.  And right when I ride into the parking area from my warmup there's brad wearing a Livestrong bike jersey too.  It was pretty funny.

Ok...   time for me to go tip over.  Night!