Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tri training: 19 days to race day!

In case you missed it, my rest week is over. I'm training for the Marble Falls triathlon on July 19. My fitness is pretty high from trail running all spring (do we even bother calling it spring in Texas?) so I'm just looking to add some cycling and swimming. It's a 1000m swim,a 23 mile bike and a 4.4 mile run. Although I haven't been out there, and probably won't get the chance before the race, from reading the blogs of previous years' competitors it sounds like your typically hilly Hill Country affair. From scouring the results, it looks like a pretty fast field. I may have overreached a bit for my first longer-than-sprint effort, but hell, I do that all the time (hells hills, dirty du, ect.)
I rode my bike for the first time since pedal thru the pines on Sunday morning. I did a standard North Loop-steck-far west-shoal creek loop in about an hour. So 13.1 pace. Not bad for a first time out and no one to pull me along. To be anywhere but in the bottom 3rd of this race, I'm probably going to have to shoot for 15 mph pace on the bike. I've still got an impressive amount of pain in my shin from my trail running digger at Hells Hills, so I didn't really push the pace. I'm in the market for some new cycling shoes. I'm still using the same entry-level shimano cleats I bought to spin at the gym during danskin training in 2004. I'm hoping some wider shoes with a little more give will let my toes spread out and release the tension along the front of my shin. You gotta love how I will buy new shoes, but not see the dr and get an x-ray to know exactly what is going on in there.
Yesterday I went and ran at the Hill of Life. I'm pretty dedicated to keeping a good part of my runs on the trail, because let's face it, I'm in the best shape of my life after the trail series and if it ain't broke, don't fix it! The run was dumb. I went at 5pm and it was 103 degrees outside. I didn't see a single person on the trail between Hill of Life and Sculpture falls. Again, I had some soreness in my left shin and was "taking" it easy, so I hiked the hill both ways and did a 5 min / 1 min walk run on the flats. I really wanted to get some bliss from running around in the woods, but its hard to accomplish in the ridiculous heat. Despite a bottle of HEED and a full camelback, I was still feeling a bit dehydrated when I woke up this morning.
Today is supposed to be my first "training swim." A competitive 1000m is a lot different from my slacker 750 workout at Stacy pool once a week. If the weather cooperates with me today, I'm going to do 2x 500m at Deep Eddy and try to establish some baseline swim times to be worked on for the race. I thought I was going to have a Pure Austin Splash and Dash between now and then, but I'm not, so I'm going to have to find a way to get some open water swim practice in before then.

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