Swim Bike Run Live

Lessons From The Road

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

I started off a solid weekend of training with my old pal, Kim. I read her blog pretty regularly, so it feels like I see her all the time, but last week we realized that it has probably been three years since we’ve actually ridden together.For someone that lives 5 miles away from me, that is unacceptable. Time flies, eh?

We immediately amended this with a 50 mile ride on Saturday morning. Besides just catching up on all the “life” that happens between each other’s blog posts, I did some major brain picking about tips for ironman training. She rocked a major PR at ironman at Cozumel last year and I absolutely respect her training dedication. I tried to act like a sponge as much as I could during the whole ride.

This is what we decided.

• I admitted that I NEVER pee on the bike during races, even half ironmans. Nver. This is apparently a problem. I know that I need to get better about my pre-race hydration, and if I’m not peeing on the bike, I still probably haven’t fixed it. The goal is to have to pee somewhere around mile 35-45. This needs some testing, but should give me a good idea of how hydrated I actually am so that I can adjust my intake on the fly and I can rock the run.
• Don’t spend the day before bumming around the expo without a bottle of fuel in my hand (and probably another in my back pack) to make sure I’m properly pre-hydrated.
• Keeping a semi-normal social life while rocking an ironman is possible. She is proof. Now I’ve just gotta repeat what she has proven.
• Pre-lubing with chamois cream is essential.
• Dropping some $$$ on swim stroke analysis will probably do me way more good than the same amount on coaching, V02 max testing or anything else. My swim stroke is almost definitely the low hanging fruit of places I can improve on to get my finishing times down.

We shot the shit about local triathlon club gossip, her latest boy stories and It also gave me a chance to show off my new Trakkers cycling kit that came in the mail this week. Gotta love some fresh threads.

Playing with my camera while Kim “takes care of business” off in the woods.

Here is to hoping that all these lessons learned transfer into some faster race times this year! I’m starting to feel a little more confident about making the potentially insane decision to coach myself to my first ironman.

Category : Cycling, Ironman, Life, Nutrition, Running, Training Log, Triathlon

Tags: ironman coach, triathlon coach

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