Swimming? Psh! With nine years of competitive swimming, I think I've got that one covered. Biking? I used to ride a mountain bike a lot. I bet I could do that without much trouble. Running? Uh-oh. I don't even LIKE doing that. How's that going to work?
Therefore, after my first season, I focused on the run. I trained for (albeit poorly) and ran my first half mary. Last year I even ran my first full mary (again, poorly trained). I still focus a good portion of my training on the run because of this initial fear of being weak on that leg.
With a solid year of run training behind me, I feel I've made my run much stronger. And as my run gets stronger, my bike begins to look weaker and weaker.
When I run, I have a good idea of what a fast or slow pace is for the distance I'm going. I know how I should feel and how to gauge my effort. On the bike, I'm clueless. I did a 45 minute ride today and despite it being my fastest ride this season (23.85 mph), I feel perfectly fine. Maybe it's something else, but I'm quite convinced that I don't know how to push myself on the bike!
For example: My average bike speed for my sprint, olympic, and 70.3 triathlons are all the same! You'd think that I'd slow down a bit over greater distances. Nope! So today I kept wondering "where should my average speed be?"
Do you have any idea?
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Questions:
1. Do you have any cycling drills that you do in training?
I'd love to hear 'em! I need something to test me.
2. Which leg of the triathlon is your strongest? Which is your weakest?
Based on both feel and stats, the swim is my bread and butter. The bike is now my weakness.
Swim fast. Bike smart. Run hard.
4 comments:
The run is my far my strongest part... but then again, I'm just now training for my first. The bike would be second, and then swim. At this point, I'm not too concerned about my times - I just hope I don't die in the water! haha!
This was rather painful
WU: 15min easy spin then do 5 x 30sec cad=60, with 30sec cad=95 easy effort.
MS: CAD=90-95 for all
#1: 2 x 5min HR Z2 with 1min rest;
#2: 2 x 4min HR Z3 with 1min rest;
#3: 2 x 3min HR Z4 with 1min rest;
# 4: 3 x 2min HR Z5 with 90sec rest;
WD: 5min easy spin
Bike is my weakness too, alas. Spinervals are good! I find it much, much harder to assess perceived effort on the bike than on the run - maybe it's just because I've been running so much longer, but truly I can run Friel zones 1-2-3-4 on feel, whereas with biking I absolutely have to have a HR monitor in order to do zone training. I found that mounting my Garmin on the handlebar so that I could actually tailor outdoor effort to HR zone, and get a sense of what number correlated with what feel, was fairly useful...
Whelp, wish I could help you out but I'm a rookie of all rookies. If you look at just the numbers, the bike is my strongest event. I average between 17 - 18. I have no idea how I've managed that on little training.
The swim is my favorite and therefore I want it to be my best. I'm just middle of the pack on a good day.
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