Just Riding My Bike

Instead of spinning, I rode my bike outside :) Not my favorite thing to do, but after this past weekend's embarrassment I need to spend as much time on my bike as possible.

I need more time on my bike. End of story. I figured spinning might do the trick, but in all honesty spinning is not the same as biking outside. So off I went on my bike ride and my Ipod :)

I decided to ride my bike in the bike lane instead of the sidewalk (I prefer the sidewalk) and what a difference. It was just an overall smooth ride. However, I still prefer the sidewalk.

I ended up riding just over 11 miles. Nothing fancy. No real method to the bike. Just wanted to go fast and really push myself. Sorry there's no real excitement... maybe in my next post ;)

Motivation Man

The way I gauge myself for a half ironman is by racing in an Olympic triathlon. Since an Olympic triathlon is half or a half ironman (hehe that sounds funny) it allows me to look at which areas I can improve in.

So for those of you who don't know what distance an Olympic traithlon entails, here you go. It consists of approximately a .92 mile swim (a half ironman is 1.2), a 25 mile bike (the half ironman is 56), and a 6.5 mile run (a half ironman is a half marathon). That's the distance I raced in this past Saturday. So how did I do? Well.. let's just say that I might need to train a little more in all three sports.

The swim consisted of a full body start swim. That means your body is fully immersed in the water, you swim up to a floating buoy, and then swim when the whistle blows. I've never had this type of start and it sucks because you get no momentum at the start. When they blew the whistle, I hadn't reached the buoy and I scrambled to catch up. I felt all over the place in the swim and I was just confused at the overall direction we were going. Needless to say, one of the most confusing swims I've ever done.

Once I got out of the water (we had to climb a ladder onto a pier), I ran toward the transition area to my bike. I got on my bike and slowly pedaled the 25 miles towards the run. There were 4 over ramps I went over just to get into the turn around point, and another 4 over ramps back. The bike was definitely a huge struggle, and made me realize how much more training I needed. I honestly haven't trained very much on the bike and my lack of training was reflected in my performance. I was the last person in my age group to come in on the bike. I need to do leg drills and just spend more time outside on the bike. I'll aim for doing a spin class once a week with an additional two days a week of cycling. Boo biking.

Now for the run, my favorite sport of the three. I got off my bike and just started comfortably getting into my pace for the run. I wanted something slower than my average pace and I ended up coming in around 10 minutes miles. The whole time I was running, I kept thinking about the heat, the pain in my body, or just quitting, but I never did. It's easy to quit if you give yourself that option. So onward I went, and beat myself at my own mind game. At mile 5 I started feeling a little woozy. I slowed doing my pace and drank a small sippy cup of soda. It seemed to help because I came in at 3:22.

After the race I was in pain and overheated, but I was glad I did it. Although everyone in that race was an amazing athlete, I still kicked that course's butt and damn proud of it.

Because of all my high intensity workouts, I took today easy and did a 4 mile run at a super slow pace and followed it by 30 minutes on the bike. It was an amazing workout. Tomorrow I will spin!
 
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