Friday, May 19, 2017

Serious shit going down here.

I'm having another day off.  It's Slateman this weekend.  I'm really excited about it.  First triathlon of the season, beautiful place, another excuse to go camping.

Unfortunately I'm in my usual pre-race state - slightly injured, exhausted from a difficult week at work and lacking any motivation to do anything.  The weather isn't really helping but it doesn't matter, today is a good rest day.  Tomorrow, we travel, register and chill.

My tt bike has been giving me considerable jip this year.  I haven't done a single race without getting leg cramps after 5 miles of riding.  I've tried to change the position of my cleats and my saddle but I've been too lazy this year to try anything else in between.  I do just need to start spending more time on it.

This morning, lacking a motivation for anything other than bikey tinkering I dug out the rollers, the offending bike and shoes and my camera and there's been a lot of this...

Some of this...


And quite a lot of this...

(note how the bike is still upright, it's just me that's the problem).

Ripley has been helping

This weekend's race isn't a really important one - it's a fun one and since I've done little training directly for it after recovering from my Stockton world championships qualifying performance 4 weeks ago, I'm not having a taper for this race, I'm just cruising through it like a "B" race, without beating myself up over it.  I have little doubt that I'll enjoy myself this weekend but right now I feel like I'm going to struggle to race so I'm having a think about the great things I've done since my last race in Stockton...
  • Swum nearly 6km outdoors... tick in the box for swimming
  • Cycled over 287 miles - not that impressive
  • Run less than 10 miles - still, no
  • Done 6 yoga sessions
  • Had a massage with Marcus to try to stop my ridiculous floppy hip. 

So that didn't work, I'm going to compare 2015 (last time I did this race) to 2017.  Now that's more like it! (2015 vs 2017)
Swim - 11km vs 21.5km
Bike - 805 mile vs 1087 miles
Run - 112 mile vs 132 mile
2015 was my first tri year back after being ill but still...

So setting time targets is tricky... given it's not important...

Swim - 20 minutes I'll be overjoyed
Bike - Sub 2 hours would be great.
Run - 1:15 (5.76 mph avg).  Sub 1 hour would be dreamland 

I went on to repair the puncture in my mountain bike and finish tidying the general chaos I had caused in the house.  I guess there's a tiny part of me that wants to start packing now.

This race feels like mock exams.  After it, I have Chester Tri and then it's Alpe d'Huez in July.  I have to start doing more miles of everything before then or else I will be in trouble.  So if Slateman is a mock exam then triathlon is definitely Chemistry.  I'm going to get an "E" this weekend but hopefully it's fine, I'll bottle down, do the work, learn the muscle memory and hopefully pass the Alpe with flying colours... just so long as my hip doesn't explode (that never happened in A'levels).


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