New positions early in the morning

The weekend’s training schedule ended up getting swapped around quite a bit at the last minute, which, afforded me the time to spend some quality time at Coach Alan’s place re-working my bike fit. 

After the Bumpass in Rumpass Olympic Triathlon a few weeks back, I had wondered a bit as to why my bike numbers were so far off the mark from what I was expecting.  I was putting out pretty significant wattage, yet my resultant MPH speeds weren’t quite where one might expect them to be given my weight.  A reader (and also a local Coach) helped fill in some of the missing gaps based on some power data of his own and a few other riders, showing that basically I was some 6-7 minutes off of what I should have been given my weight and power output.

Himself curious he happened to take a closer look at some of my race photos from that day and noted a pretty open position – something better for catching wind than having airflow streamline around me.  The pictures were taken at an awkward point in the race (being chased by that tractor), so by themselves they were sorta an outlier.  I had simply written it off that the other guys just put out even more watts than I.  But combined with the additional athletes power info, weight and race splits he had – they helped to form a more clear picture about the time I’d been leaving on the course.  Information that my Coach and I could take to try and fix the situation.

Now, you may wonder why my position sucks.  Some of it is somewhat purposeful.  Up until this season my focus had been on Ironman races, and thus my position was focused on the only thing that really mattered – managing to stay aero for five hours.  I lack the flexibility (I’m not Gumby!) to have a much more aggressive position for five hours…but for an hour or two (the races I’m focusing on this year), I can change things up quite a bit and get a much more aggressive position.  I’m working on flexibility…but given I’m still about a cantaloupe away from touching my toes…it’s a ways away.  As an aside, you may remember some of this from last fall doing the same thing – again, working on position.

So, we spent late Saturday afternoon re-working all sorts of stuff for the ride the following day.  Closing up the aerobars a bit, readjusting heights, etc..  Some of it’s pretty significant, so it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out next weekend at the Rev3 Triathlon in Knoxville.

By getting the position retrofit done Saturday night, I’d be able to put it through its paces some twelve hours later out on the road, Sunday morning.

Just for those trying to do the math in their head, we were on our bikes at 7AM!  Yikes!  I’m not an early bird.  Heck, I’m not even a bird at all.  And that was dang early.  But…it’s what we needed to fit all the day’s activities in.

The bike was a 2hr main chunk at Z2, followed by a much more aggressive 20m and 15m sets immediately afterwards, for a total of 2:35.  Afterwards I had a short 5K to throw down.

(The only challenge with the new aerobar positions is the Garmin Edge 500 has a super-tight fit…and pressing the buttons is not so easy now.  Need to re-think the position of it I think.  I actually showed off using it on the side of the bars in my review, may have to convert to that.)

The bike went quite well actually.  Despite the super-high temps this weekend, I was able to keep things really moving and stay in the assigned zones.  Further, the new position didn’t bother me.  Sure, it was different, and sure, I felt it a bit – but given I was out there almost three hours, I won’t have any issues really holding down the fort for an hour at Knoxville.

Plus, as a bonus, I was still able to walk/run afterwards – which is always seen as advantageous in the triathlon scene!

The run itself was pretty solid…at least for the first 10 minutes or so, until having to backtrack up the hills and the heat finally caught up.

(This is not in Northwest DC, but rather along the way there)

After our very early morning ride and run, we made a beeline for the house before continuing up to Northwest DC to do brunch with Lindsey and Carl.  Last weekend was dinner, but this time it was brunch!  Cause let’s be honest, brunch is everyone’s favorite meal of the day!

Regrettably, while I brought with me my little camera, and it does great in training situations – it does slightly less great in eating situations…so all the pictures came out sorta crappy.  So instead, I’ll give you pictures from Saturday morning.  Just the day prior The Girl made some pretty awesome pancakes for breakfast – basically just like the ones Carl made, thus those will be the substitute pictures!  So, here’s a few of those pics:

We also played some Wii– and I’ve never played with a Wii before…so it was a rather new experience.  Though, I can see how it might become quite addicting after a while.  As a group it was pretty fun (mostly because…apparently I have mad Wii Skillz!)

Finally, afterwards we swung by Bonzai (local tri shop) to drop-off the bike to get its annual done.  They’ll be re-doing some of the cabling to fix some issues and clean up some of the extra length that’s wrapped all over the place like a Arabian snake charmer’s little basket.  Hopefully Mr. Bike will be super-happy for this weekend’s race, after all, we don’t want him upset!

Speaking of which…should have some entertaining posts for this week…so stay tuned!

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