Training 5/09/10
San Mateo Memorial Park
After visiting the Oakland Museum last week I’ve had the Mommas and the Papas song “California Dreamin’” in my head all week. This past weekend we headed to the hills above Pescadaro for some camping in the redwoods and bike riding along the pacific coast. Apart from a little rain on Sunday, it was California Dreamin’ all weekend long.
Training this past week was going along great until I hit Friday and with a dentist appointment, Kelly’s Egyptian feast and an appointment for her to get her hair cut, converging on a work day when I needed to get out of town for a camping trip early, neither running or swimming happened. It’s also debatable how much work happened either.
Swim: (1hr 28 min) 3700.0 Yds
On Monday my main set was 16x50yds. There’s only so many ways these workouts slice the yardage. If I’m not doing 50s I’m probably doing 100s and if not 100s then it must be 200s and if that’s not the case then it’s probably a straight swim. Then repeat. Anyway, since I don’t really do other strokes, dislike using pool toys and can’t remember ladder sets, I guess that’s what I’m stuck with. And I’m kind of OK with that.
I did notice that when I swim ‘fast’, I swim about 3-5 seconds faster than when I swim easy and concentrate on form. When I swim fast I also use about twice as much energy. In the end, if I can swim my easy pace for 1.2 miles then I’ll be happy with the result. Actually, if I can actually swim 1.2 miles I’ll be happy. Not. A. Swimmer.
On Wednesday I did another 2500 yards, the main set was 4x200yds. I did the first in 1:57 and then the remaining ones in 1:59-2:00. Felt easier to go that long in the pool than last week and I was actually looking forward to Friday’s swim that never happened. Before my last triathlon I was swimming more like 2:15 min/100 yards at best.
Bike: 6hrs 40 min
The two M2 sessions went fine this week, though Thursdays left me almost falling down the steps as I left. A large part of the workout was low cadence/high power strength work which did a number on my legs. Perhaps that’s a good thing since they were apparently shocked by having that kind of resistance inflicted upon them. That maybe also part of how I never managed to get a workout in on Friday.
On the weekend we had what was definitely our best long ride.
Setting out from our campsite deep in the redwood trees we wound our way down to the coastal town of Pescadaro, then headed north towards Half Moon Bay on the Stage Rd through some rural countryside featuring goat farms and two pretty good sized climbs of about 400ft each.
From there we turned onto Hwy 1 and rode south along the coast, flying downwind at more that 20 miles/hr with the sea pounding onto the rocks beside us (and trucks thundering by on the other side). Fortunately the shoulder was pretty wide most of the way. A+ scenery.
At Ano Nuevo State Park we reversed direction and headed north back up Hwy 1. Progress was less speedy going back into the wind, but I tucked into my aero position and kept up 15-16 miles/hr most of the way.
At Gazos Creek Rd, the back road way past Butano State Park and back up into the hills we stopped at a Gas Station. I heard something fly off my bike, but couldn’t see anything so assumed it was nothing in that way that you do. A 1/4 mile later I realized one screw of my left cleat had come off and it was now very hard to get my foot disengaged that side. That’s the problem with biking, there’s always something to fix.
In the end we covered 50 miles and about 4500 ft of climbing.
I also experimented with how many calories I could take in liquid form. I placed about 340 calories in each of three bike bottles, using a mixture of gatorade and carbo-pro. In the end I actually only drank 2 of the bottles because I also ate 1.5 bonk breakers and a Gu. That meant I took in around 1000 calories and 50 Oz of fluid in the 4 hour ride, which isn’t too bad calorie wise, but of course I probably could have drunk more. More experimenting to come, I think I’ll dial back the calories in the drinks, especially the amount of gatorade…
Run: 1hr 35 mins
It amuses me how little I’m running now. Still with 11 hours of training last week I think things will be OK. The one run I did last week was an evening run at Lake Chabot. With the rains and warm weather the area is the greenest I’ve ever seen it. Too bad I didn’t run with a camera.
The run felt strong but I could feel it the next day. I’m losing my trail running muscles.
