Monday, June 16, 2014

Week In Review

Last week saw a return to structured training, mostly.  With the end of Corporate Challenge Track, I was able to focus back on my training plan.  Because I was going to miss Masters Swim class Monday, I hit up the brand spanking new lap lane only pool at the YMCA.  It was awesome.  It was the perfect temp.  The old lap lane pool (which is still in use) is used for aerobics for those with arthritis, so they keep it a bit warmer than a normal lap lane pool.  I just did 2,500 yard long swim and it was great.  The deep end goes down 12 feet as that end has a diving board.

Tuesday I ended up with a rest day because of a concert I was attending (Ben Folds and the KC Symphony... quite awesome).  Since I had Wednesday off from work to take my nephew to the Royals game, I decided to make up for the missed day.  All before 9:30am I managed to go here:


and then here

Fancy new pool has flags and stuff
As I mentioned in my post from two years ago, my luck with track workouts hasn't been the best.  This theme continued.  As soon as I took that photo, I turned around and 60 high schoolers streamed out of the school.  BLERG!  Last time this happened, I scurried away but this time I asked the coach if I could hang for a bit and he obliged.  I really wanted to do this workout on a track instead of English Landing Park.  Technically, the intervals weren't by distance (they were timed) but I wanted to enjoy the track.  Fortunately I was done by the time the track team really started their workouts.

My pool workout went really really well too.  I was hitting some consistent paces that I never saw last year.

Watching the Royals sweep the Cleveland Indians!
After the Royals game, TKB and I went to Shawnee Mission Park so I could get some hill work in on the bike.  I did 5 loops of the park loop with an average over 20 mph for the 1 hour and 6 minutes.  Felt like I was in great shape for the upcoming KC Corporate Challenge Triathlon.

Thursday night was back at Masters Swim class.  Everything was going "swimmingly" until nearly the last of the final set.  I pushed off the wall and my left calf went rock hard.  I had to stop immediately, which was unfortunate as I was leading the lane.  Ducked out of peoples way and kept pulling on my foot to ease the cramp.  It took over a minute for it to relax.  I was done swimming. It was good timing because Coach Doug was pulling the cover off a diving block.  I hopped out and took a shot at diving off the block.  It went really really well.  No red chested beast look after about 5 practice dives.

Not bad considering my calf was still sore.  In fact, that cramp was so bad that it still hurts today, albeit slightly, but it still hurts.  I have never had it cramp up the bad before.  I was concerned it ripped a tendon!  Because of that, I took Friday off from any training to give it a chance to heal up.  I did have a triathlon on Sunday!

Saturday - Short Brick?
As I mentioned a few weeks ago (I think?), I got new cycling shoes.  These are more triathlon specific as they have one strap instead of 3 complicated ones.  I finally gave a shot at doing a "flying mount" on my bike.  I was unsure of how steady I would be with this.

To do this you have your shoes on your pedals and then, using rubber bands, tie them to your frame so they stay in place and level.  My left shoe/pedal would be in the 9 o'clock position and the right shoe/pedal in the 3 o'clock position (or 9 o'clock depending on if you are looking straight on).  You run your bike to the mount line and then step on the left pedal and coast a bit while flinging your right foot over the bike seat and placing it on the right shoe/pedal.  I attempted this briefly earlier in the week and felt very unstable with my left foot solely on the pedal.

To prepare, wearing my running shoes, I stood on the left pedal and rode my bike for about 30 feet.  I did this a couple times before attempting to fling my foot over the seat.  This helped give me a feel for the mount.  I then tried it barefoot with my shoes attached and it was so much more steady. I didn't put my feet in the shoes yet.  I just kept trying over and over.

Finally, I did it one last time but put my feet in my shoes and did a quick 5 mile ride... or so I thought!  With about 3/4 of a mile to go, I ran over something that blew my front tube.  Ugh.  While changing it, I blew my only spare tube airing it up with the CO2 cartridges.  Crap.  Fortunately another cyclist stopped by and offered a spare.  I graciously took it and managed to fix my front.  I then realized that whatever popped my front tire also got my rear tube.  I ended up just walking my bike the 3/4 of a mile home.

That cyclist had given me a tube in a box, which contained a receipt to a local bike shop.  So I went to the shop later that day and paid for a tube on his account.

KC Corporate Challenge Triathlon....
Cancelled due to weather.  It looked gloomy on the 10 day forecast and never changed.  Storms arrived in KC around 4:30am and it was called at 4:45am.  Poo.  The storms really weren't that bad but they made the right call.  If it was possible to delay the race by 2 hours, it would have been perfect but that wasn't in the cards considering all the permits and scheduling that went into it.

I'm not bitter about it.  I wasn't bitter about KC Triathlon being cancelled in 2013 (and I paid money out of my pocket for that).  I just feel bad for my Tri/Du team that had been training for it and couldn't race.  Many of them plan to sign up for SMP Triathlon in July.  It'd be nice if Parks and Rec gave them a little discount!  As of now, I don't plan to race SMP Tri.

Well, this was a bit more of a play-by-play than I usually do for my weekly review but had a lot of things going on that I felt were noteworthy.  This week I hope to stick with the plan a bit more.  The last month I've felt "off" from my training.  I'm finally getting back into the groove.

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