Tri To Help Recap

 Not. Aero. Or. Fast. 

 Shut your yapper. And let us go already. :). 

 Me, anxious....na. 

 You're kidding right. I'm like waaaaay faster than this. OMG guys, really. 

 Ok, now time to turn the jets on. 

 Green for good luck. 

 Making that treadmill my bitch. 

 Throw in a little backstroke never hurt anyone. 

 Straight up flying ladies and gents :). 

 Conor's version of a flip turn. Ha. Wow. 

 With a 10 minute transition you got times to flaunt the guns. 

 Checking out dudes spedometer. Soooooo pissed. 

 Anger face. 

Ya, just be done already bike. How I hate thee. 

I've basked in my glory for long enough and now it's time to provide a recap of the days festivities.

Swim: 10 minutes (27 laps)
Surprising to me, the swim was a 25 meter pool. Usually, your run-of-the-mill gyms have super short pools (like 20 yards or so). This was a pleasant surprise and I got in the water 10 minutes early for some breastroke, backstroke and about 150 freestyle just to get warmed up. Every other racer in my wave looked at me like I was loco for expending MORE energy, but I warm up for other races...why not this one? There were about 10 other folks in my wave, half guys, half chicks.

When the gun went off, I just cruised. Even in a short 10 minute swim, it makes no sense to start off sprinting. I split the lane with a bulky black dude who bolted out the gates. At the first turn (25 meters) I was even with about 4 others. I'm no collegiate swimmer, but I knew I'd be better than most everyone at this type of event in the swim. Sooooo, I kinda chuckled as by the 37.5 meter mark some of those same folks had clinged onto the wall of that first turn to catch their breaths. Maybe warming up woulda helped!!!

I kept a consistent pace, not paying much attention to who was trying to catch me. After about 6 laps, it got impossible to tell who was being lapped anyhow. I haven't been swimming much at all, so I got a bit fatigued about 7 minutes in. I picked up the pace, knowing I had to be close to finishing. I got about 2/3 of the way to the 28th lap when the dude called 'Time!'. So that final lap didn't count. I think my pace was around 1:26/100m for anyone who gives a shit. Job done.

10 minute transition to bike.

Bike: 30 minutes

Now, in theory, 10 minutes is a shload of time to waddle my fat ass to the spin machine. In theory. But because I had so much extra time, I decided to change out for each sport. I brought bike shorts and a t-shirt and running shorts and another t-shirt for the run. I know that 30 minute spin for me can produce approximately 16 buckets of sweat and I was not about to run 20 minutes with that thing sloshing all over the machine and innocent bystanders. Not cool.

So, yeah, I changed and got my cycling shoes on (to make myself look even more pretentious). By the time I got up to the spin, I realized just how crappy the spin bikes were that they were using. Really, really shitty. It took me 3 minutes just to adjust the bike to make it rideable and then the dude says "1 Minute!" So I hop on and my cleat doesn't snap down fully. It's not completely popping out but I can't pull up that hard either. Oh well. I thought about changing into my running shoes and just using the baskets, but I just sucked it up and hoped for the best.

And my best was shit. It's strange because I have so much confidence in my cycling lately. My legs have never been stronger. I have new muscle mass I never had before. Some days riding I feel super powerful and my speeds are pretty high. I tried to find a sweet spot of where the fastest speed was for the computer, but it seemed to be at about 115 rpm's. That's extremely quick. Anything lower and the speed dropped precipitously. So while I'm drenched in sweat and my preceived effort is really high, my speed was stagnant around 18 mph. 18 mph is a joke for me. I can hold 7mph faster than that for half hour. Granted, it doesn't translate always from road to indoor, but this thing had to have been WAAAY off. I glanced at the dude next to me who wasn't sweating and was also holding 18mph. So I was pissed. With 10 minutes to go I stopped pushing hard. The difference between hard effort and decent effort was only 1 mph, so I just backed off. With 2 minutes to go I got so disappointed that I just soft-pedaled lol. Don't know why I got so discouraged but I remember (at the time) blaming it on the calibration. IT CAN'T BE ME! WHY THAT'S PREPOSTEROUS!!!!

So ya, bike over. Thank god. Time to change. Again.

5 Minute Transition Bike to Run.

Run: 20 Minutes

I had plenty of time to change and get a fresh pair of clothes on. Felt really nice. My heart rate dropped tremendously during those 5 minutes and I also had that 2 minute easy pedaling to get me under control too. Time to hit my home away from home...the treadmill :).

I'm used to running on the treadmill. I do MANY of my runs on the treadmill. They made all of us set the incline for 1% (surprising) but I've been training at that anyhow this year so it was no skin off my back. As soon as it began (took 30 seconds to get up to speed) I knew I'd have a solid run. I've been running more than ever, and I fell into a breathing pattern early on.

I kept the speed near 10.0 mph and increased it a bit in the second half. I was still a bit frustrated from the bike so I was yelling things to motivate myself. It was a bit dramatic. But the new wave was biking in front of us so I was trying to motivate them too. 3.35 miles later I was exhausted. I ran about as well as I could have hoped. Let's hope that transfers to outside....