Bike on the brain

As the triathlon roller coaster goes in my life, I tend to be more focused on one discipline more than the other two. Mentally more so than the actual hours of training but sometimes the training as well. It’s the same as how I can feel really strong in one discipline and feel like I’m losing it in another. It’s never all up and it’s never all down. Right now running is still pretty nonexistent, I’ve been struggling mentally in the pool and riding has become a big focus for me. 

For a few weeks riding could be summed up in one word: climbing. First it was the climbing ride before camp, and then it was lots of climbing at camp, and then it was hill repeats and more climbing work. I even did a metric century "race" at an aerobic effort up a mountain. None of which made my back and knees feel any better. Rides have returned back to the normal rolling hills of South Carolina but the pain is persistent.

Right now I have mixed feeling about riding. I love being on my bike! I love the fact that my rides are starting to get long and I’m putting in more hours and miles. I did 5 hour rides the last two weeks. Neither was particularly hard work, it was just long and tiring. Although I love that I’m finally getting in those long, what feel like all day rides, I’m not enjoying it as much as I should. A part of it is the pain. The first hour is by far the best. My legs still feel fresh, it feels easy, it’s not blistering hot yet, there are few cars on the road, I get to watch the sun rise. But as the hours go on the pain starts to settle in. My back starts to hurt and I can’t get it to away whether I sit up or stay in aero. The top of my knee hurts with any sort of real power I put into the pedals. Now my hip starts to get a bit cranky after several hours. And of course sitting on a bike seat for that many hours brings major discomfort. The pain isn’t bad enough that I feel like I need to stop which is good when I’m 30 miles from home. It’s just enough that it’s the main thing on my mind. It becomes counting down the miles until I’m home, counting down until the next time I told myself I could take a quick break to get off my bike for a few seconds to stretch out.

The pains aren’t the only issue. Part of it’s the heat. Let’s not forget the heat. All of my rides end up at some point being in 90F+ temperature and I seem to have this uncanny ability to ride when there are no clouds in the sky. I know you’re probably thinking suck it up and drink more. And I have. My body is finally adapting to the heat but it’s still not fun looking like I went swimming while on my bike. The other issue though is much more mental. It’s something that took me a while to put my finger on and I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s something that doesn’t just affect the bike but affects my training as a whole. I still have some thinking to do but I’m trying, I really am, to bring the joy back to the bike.

Bike fit

While trying to figure out why my body is being a piece of shit and having pains pop up everywhere, I finally shot the lock off the wallet (that lock has a lot of holes in it) to get a bike fit. I went to see Karel whom works with his wife as part of Trimarni. Karel was recommended by a lot of local athletes as well as Katie so I felt happy with my choice. This ended up being a two part fit which resulted in a new handlebar piece to lower the handlebars, inserts for my shoes to prevent my feet from moving as much and a new saddle to help get me in the proper position on the bike. He used the RETUL system as a starting point and made tweaks from there. Here’s a before and after for those who can tell a difference….

The fit feels good. It felt different at first, obviously, but it didn’t take long to get used to it. Shortly after getting the shoe inserts my foot pain went away so one issue gone! I’m still riding on a demo saddle but I instantly knew I would buy it as it reduces the pains in my special place. But let’s be honest, no seat in the world or amount of chamois cream will make it pain free. I unfortunately didn’t do myself any favors in Boulder in regards to other pains. I got the new fit about a week before camp, started to get used to that, then went to camp where I rode my brains out for 3 days on Katie’s bike and then came home back to mine and then got more adjustments. It can take a long time for your body to completely adapt to a new fit and I think jumping between bikes and making changes all within a short time frame did not make my body happy. I’ve been dealing with a bunch of pain on the top of my knees and some lower back pain since before the first fit. The knee pain went away, came back and is almost better again. The back I’m still dealing with while trying to get used to the more aggressive aero position but my body will adjust in time. Overall, very happy with the fit! Certainly worth the extra hole in the lock and I now understand the importance of a proper fit.

TAD Triathlon Training Camp Part 2

I know all (4 of you) have been waiting on the edge of your seat for rest of this exciting telling of  training camp …. So there a few of us were, finally at Ward. While we were waiting to see if others would catch up, Katie suggested another athlete, Chris, and I do some extra climbing to this lake. It was apparently beautiful and totally worth it. Next lie: we were told it was about 1.5 miles and should take 15 minutes. In all fairness they weren't lying on purpose. Despite being tired I was up for the challenge. Chris rode ahead and I trekked up the road myself. 15 minutes went by… 20 minutes went by… and finally 2.8 miles later I reached some gate and a visitor’s center. I asked someone how far to the lake and they told me about 2 miles up. Are you kidding me?! Nope. Just no. Done. So done. Chris was obviously still on his way up but I didn’t care so I turned around and started the ride back. Luckily was mostly downhill at that point but I will still going downhill. I had the two short climbs left and during those was when I was hitting bottom. I was so tired and the caffeine I had in my bottles hadn’t kicked in yet. And of course it was at that point Katie and Wes pulled up next to me and I’m not entirely sure what I said but it was mostly noises and “uh huhs” at which point they quickly left me.

Luckily by the time I reached the main descent my caffeine kicked in and I was starting to feel better. This is when the fun started again. I really like descending and it’s a skill I’ve been working on. I hit 43 mph which I think is a new high for me. The descent really was a blast. Even when it started raining I was still having fun. After the descent I managed to catch up to rest of the group that didn’t do the extra climb. After sitting behind them for a minute getting splattered with mud from the wet roads, I decided I just wanted to be done so I went to the front and pulled the group back. It was a tough ride but I really did enjoy it even when I was feeling low. I would love to do it again sometime. I broke a few of my records on that ride… most elevation gain (6000ft), longest distance (78 miles) and longest time (5.5 hours). Because of the weather we scrapped the swim and got to eat, drink and relax rest of the night.

Come Sunday we were all feeling pretty beat up and tired. We kept joking how difficult going up stairs felt. Yet we had lots of hard work to do that morning. We started with a ride which included 3x15 minute TT efforts up Nelson Road. We were told to give our very best, don’t worry about numbers, go for broke. If I was riding behind someone my goal was to catch them and maybe pass them. On the last one suddenly Chris passed me and a second later I hear Katie yelling “CATCH HIM!”. There was a lot more yelling behind me from her about not letting him go, make him work for it, really dig, is that your best. And you know what? All that yelling really made me dig a bit deeper. I often wonder how much more I can really push myself during max efforts. How deep can I dig into the pain cave? I know I can go deeper. I’m pretty sure if I did my power test on the road either trying to catch Katie’s ass or having her barking at me from behind, my numbers would be higher. I know I respond well when people yell at me to push harder and keep going. Except when my husband does it I laugh because apparently I don’t take him seriously. Unfortunately I cannot depend on other people to make myself push harder. I have to learn to do it on my own. Maybe I could have pushed harder during those TT efforts, maybe not. I don’t know but I was happy with the effort I was able to do at the time.

Afterwards we got to run off the bike. Unfortunately this wasn’t an easy run off the bike. We did an easy jog to the track for mile repeats. Since I’m still dealing with injury issues I was allowed to do half mile repeats. The only rule was we couldn’t go slower than our first one. At this point we were all exhausted and this was a real challenge. Our legs felt like they were going to give out. We were hitting walls and couldn’t ask any more of our legs. Since I did half the track workout essentially I was able to go a bit faster each time. What I really learned was not from doing my own work, but watching the others do their work. I watched them struggle and fight against the fatigue. It was truly inspiring to watch them put it all out there. Afterwards we got to do an easy swim which felt good. Then it was Katie’s for more drinking and eating!

Monday morning we did the Bolder Boulder 10K. I debated a lot about signing up for it because I knew trying to run over 6 miles when I’ve been running/walking 2 miles at a time was a horrible idea. I signed up anyway against my better judgment mostly because I knew it would be a fun race where we wouldn’t give a shit about our time. It certainly started out as the most fun I’d ever had a race. We paid no attention to pace and stopped at everything interesting thing along the way. This included trampoline, jell-o shots, dancing with cows and belly dancers, peeing against some random guys house (we asked), eating Doritos and cupcakes. I was having fun but unfortunately my body had enough and was started to give out. After about a mile my knee started hurting. And then it got worse. And then my foot started hurting. After 3 miles I decided to stay behind and walk rest of it. It took me 1 hour 27ish minutes to do a 10K.

Afterwards there was a lot of walking which turned to limping and pretty much everything on my left side was hurting and just done. After all that I got to hang out at the airport for a few hours, have a delayed flight due to weather, miss my layover in Atlanta, rent a car to drive 2.5 hours and get home at 2:30AM. Needless to say, my body was pretty pissed off at me at that point. It’s doing better now though.

Overall, the trip was awesome! I had such a fun time during all the training (mostly) and had a great time with my team and coach. Katie did a great job putting together an awesome camp and I was sad it was over. I’d move to Boulder in a hot second if I could. The views are gorgeous and I love the atmosphere. It’s not very often you go to a place and think “I belong here”. I was amazed at how there were cyclists EVERYWHERE. So many of the roads have bike lanes or shoulders. There were even cyclists on the highway. I can’t wait until I get to go back there again although I have no plans as of now. Until next time Boulder!

TAD Triathlon Training Camp Part 1

This past weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to Colorado for another training camp. This one a triathlon camp with heavy focus on riding. I went back and forth a lot about going to this camp for financial reasons. Thanks to several people, I was able to make it happen. Katie let me borrow her extra TT bike, I was able to share a rental car with another athlete and the two of us stayed at a local’s house. Thanks to Katie, Melissa and Kaitlyn, I was able to go. And of course my very supportive husband who said I could go after hearing me go back and forth for probably two months.

We arrived to Boulder Thursday and were greeted by hail on the drive in. Got to love the sporadic weather there. We did an easy jog for over 30 minutes and I did the whole thing without any walking. This was the beginning of not listening to my PT’s running instructions. My body held up well though and it was the beginning of the awesome views while training.

Friday morning we started with a ride to Carter Lake which had a short climb to the lake. I do most of my riding alone so it was a nice change of pace riding with a group and getting back into drafting. On the way back several of us experienced having to push harder than we expected to not get dropped. Afterwards we did a short run off the bike and I kept mine to 10 minutes to not push myself. After riding, running and scarfing down lunch, we headed to the pool for some hard swimming. The few of us that shared the lane with Katie got to play a game of don’t-let-me-lap-you-200s while wearing whatever toys made us fastest... paddles and buoy for me! I was swimming right behind her and played don’t-let-the-gap-grow which I did fairly well at. The whole group then swam 25 sprints with bands (around your ankle) racing each other. Racing your coach is both fun and extra motivation, not to mention exhausting. It was a good swim!

After all that training, our day still wasn’t over. We got to quickly shower, shove some more calories down and then go to RallySport for a strength learning session with Erin Carson and then a nutrition session with Breeze Brown. Both were very educational and I particularly enjoyed the nutrition part because it gave me some more stuff to look at and numbers to run. It was definitely a long day but I enjoyed every part of it.

 Saturday we had the big ride on the schedule… the ride to Ward which was a few hours of solid climbing up a mountain. Several of us were a bit nervous about this ride for the distance of the climb and the finishing altitude over 9000ft. I was already lacking in oxygen since I live around 1000 altitude. Wes from Pro Bike Express was doing SAG. We rode to the start of the climb, stripped off our layers to leave with Wes and then started the climb at various paces. I started with one of the guys but decided to go ahead as I didn’t mind doing the climb by myself. The views were gorgeous! The ride was tough and tired but not bad. What you would expect out of a climb. I thought looking at the map ahead of time that the climb was over 20 miles. At some point I asked someone I was passing if they knew how much longer until the top and she said about 3 miles until Point to Point which was definitely not 20 miles. I’m glad I asked though because it was where I saw the PBE truck and had to make my turn. I made the turn and met up with Wes, Katie and two other athletes. Together we would do Point to Point. This is where we heard the first lie.

Katie and Wes (although I think mostly Wes) told us there wasn’t a lot of climbing until Ward… a bunch of downhill and maybe a mile climb and some more downhill. Lie. Such a lie. There were two short downhill sections and rest of it was uphill, about 1400ft gain over almost 10 miles. Which isn’t horrible but at that point we already climbed a decent amount. I stayed on Katie's wheel for a while but I was over my power range so I let them go. By the time I reached Ward I was pretty exhausted. We were told we could ride down to town to fill up bottles and go the bathroom. After going down what ended up being the steepest part of the whole day I immediately wished I had just peed behind the truck so I wouldn’t have to ride back up. And you’ll have to wait to hear how rest of the ride went because I don’t feel like typing anymore right now. To be continued…