I've been thinking a lot about Wildflower since we got back, especially during the long sessions on my living room floor working over my legs with "the stick." It's interesting, but more than anything I've done since I got into triathlon, this race really brought a lot into focus. I talked about the nutrition problems and T2 issues in my race report, so I won't go into them again, but I've started trying to put the puzzle together to make sure that Vineman goes better than WF.
This isn't to say that I got off to a clean start.
I really meant to do some light recovery workouts this past week to help clean Wildflower out of my system, I really did. It just didn't work out. I was only home one night last week, and that night I was working, so it was Friday before I managed to get in any actual exercise, and that was only about 3/4 mile at the Cove. A decent swim, but not much for the workout value.
No worries, though, because by the time we got to the Brewhouse, I had a ride scheduled for Saturday morning. I had originally planned to hit the coast with the tri club, but I wound up riding the Del Dios/Elfin Forest route with Greg, which was cool. A little harder perhaps than I had originally intended for my "recovery" workout, but it felt good to push and to keep up with someone who I know is faster than me.
Nonetheless, I was plagued by some equipment issues. At Wildflower and throughout the last few months of training, my aero bottle had been driving me nuts. Turns out that I really can't use one. My shoulders are too big. The bracket that holds the bottle in place is stretched too wide and it rattles and flops around. On the last two rides, the race included, it has actually fallen off. I caught it both times, but jeez. In order to keep it from falling off a second time, I had to dump my cage bottle and fill it from the aero to lighten the load. So I did the rest of the ride on two bottles of watered down carbo-pro. Yay.
On the way home, I stopped and bought new bottle cages for the tri bike and, although two bottles don't fit comfortably inside the frame, I'm gonna try my mext ride with them anyway. I had a new mixture of carbo-pro all set to go, but it got screwed up. I'll take another whack at it next time.
I was also shaking down new bike shoes. They rock. The stiffer soles and wider toe boxes in the Northwaves make a world of difference, but I don't have the left cleat lined up right, so by the halfway point my knee was killing me. A simple enough thing to fix with a trainer session and a screwdriver, but I have to find the time, absolutely have to before next Saturday.
As soon as I get them dialed, I start on bricks.
No comments:
Post a Comment