Living Well is the Best Revenge

Thursday

swim – 500 of drills to warmup then 35 minute time trial. I started out counting the laps but I lost count and I just gave up on it and decided to focus on thinking about form and rotation.  Felt like it went well.  Kevin joined me halfway through which was helpful because he is an excellent pacer setter. He will swim right next to whatever pace your going or slight faster and he just stay there so it keeps you from slowing down.  He’s like a metronome. If only I could have him in the water with me at pocono! 200 of breaststroke to cooldown. Shoulder was a little achy from all the water time this week but im not concerned about it with the taper week coming up.

Bike Wod – I almost hesitate to even call it that. When I got done with it I thought, “did I really put bike shorts on for this?” I had quite the roadie attitude last night about the whole thing.  The positive points of the workout were I took the P2 out for the first time since Burlington. I got to acclimate myself to it a bit and also test out my new garmin computer on it. I have the aeromount so it hides between my torpedo water bottle. Good news its aero. Bad news not easy to read in the aero bars because of how far back it is. You have to put your head really down to see it. It is easy to read when you sit up in the bullhorns. So maybe I will just check it when I am getting a drink/food. I don’t really need to see it constantly. They are going to have bottle exchanges every 15 miles on the bike at pocono so I only intend to bring 1 bottle on the bike and just switch it out from the torpedo mount. This way I am not dragging that water weight up the hills with me.  It not going to be hot so this should be sufficient. The workout was a 10 minute warmup. I headed over to my velodrome so that I could stay in the aerobars without too much traffic interference and I did 1 min on, 1 min off, 2 mins on, 1 min off, 3 mins on, 1 min off, 4 mins on plus a 5 minute cooldown ride.  Not a whole lot happening there. I plan on taking damon out on my ride this weekend and next week just to really get the feel of being on the p2 again. Although I have to admit I have been debating taking the R3 on the pocono course. Why? 1)It’s hilly. The R3 is a climbing machine! Def better than the P2. 2) I descend as others have told me “like a maniac” on the R3. I still descend well on the P2 depending on the conditions. Meaning I can cut better lines turning down or off a descent on my R3.  I still come out of my aerobars when cutting a hard corner sometimes on the p2. Maybe I haven’t spent enough time on it. I don’t know. I def do a more aggressive tuck on the R3. 3) I have the feeling the pocono is going to be a technical bike course. I saw at least 43 turns on the cue sheet. Nationals in Vermont ended up being a more technical course that I was expecting and I remember thinking to myself as some guys passed me how the hell are they not dumping their tt bikes riding them like that on this course. They held much better lines and stayed more aero than I did through some sections of the course. Don’t get me wrong the P2 did not feel bad on the Burlington bike course. In fact it was a fun ride especially on some of the descents. So maybe I was just feeling like a roadie last night when I was thinking about this on my ride.  But if it is a technical course and I can corner better on my R3 than my P2. The R3  might be a better choice. The R3 corners and responds incredibly well. I love through that bike around!  The only thing I can say about it is that decending high 40s low 50s the bike does vibrate. It doesn’t have the stiffness that Stefan my heavyweight does. But  neither does Damon. Anyway, Both bikes are really light so weight doesn’t come into play either. The bottom line is the p2 is the faster bike in most conditions so I should take that one. The caveat is if I can actually ride it in the faster manner than I ride the R3 on this course. And  therein lies the rub.

My plantar fascia was killing me last night and today on my surgical foot. I didn’t like that at all. It was worrisome but I’m stretching and keeping tabs on it. The knee is pretty much the same. No worse no better.

Friday

Swim – 500 of drills to warmup. Then 6 rounds of 2 minutes on 2 minutes off with a dive start. On the first round hitting the water actually shut my timer on the tap watch off so I did 6 laps then checked it and realized it wasn’t running. On the next 5 reps I fixed the watch so that wouldn’t happen and I hit 5 laps everytime.  That put me on the wrong end of the pool for the dive so I did a 25 of easy breaststroke during the 2 minutes off to get me back to the deep water. Cooldown 100 of dolphin dives (shallow water)/breaststroke(deepwater) then 50 of butterfly. It’s been a long time but the fly is back baby! Except I haven’t done fly in so long that ended up not being much a cooldown so I ended up doing another 50 as side balance.

Bike – it pouring here today so sadly I didn’t get out on the p2. Instead used the trainer. Did 10 minute easy spin as a warmup. Then 20 minutes pushing almost the hardest gear on the bike the entire time. Then 5 minute easy spin to cooldown.

Tomorrow I hope to get a good 25 minute TT in on my TT bike but not sure if the weather is going to cooperate. Might have to move it to Sunday. Going to hit some yoga to unbind. Might even swim in the morning if I am awake early enough.