Funked Up Triathletes (Sprint, Olympic Focus) Group - Closed Until Next Season (Page 14)

I got my P2 3 weeks before my last Oly and it is night and day compared to my road bike (with clip-on aero bars) - which I love.  The aero position feels more natural and for the same RPE speed is up by a significant amount.  Doooooooo it . . .

I raced the Vineman 70.3 this year and it has a great bike course through the wine region of Napa/Sonoma Valleys.  Prior to the race I rode the course 3 times, and decided I'd ride it again yesterday.  Since we've had some discussion on acquiring a tribike, thought I'd do a non-scientific comparison.  All my previous rides were on my road bike but yesterday I got to ride it on my P2 for the first time.  The course is a loop with the outbound leg all rollers ending in a hill with a really sweet downhill and the return leg 2/3 flat and 1/3 rollers with one significant hill.  I was interested in how I would approach the course on the tribike vs the road bike.  Now I wasn't racing it and I was riding solo so it isn't a full apples to apples comparison, but some things did stand out. 

1) Riding the rollers.  On my road bike I was constantly having to switch back from the aero bars to the horns as you are shifting all the time.  On the tribike I did the all the rollers in aero having the ability to shift without changing position.  That was nice!

2) Big downhills.  Actually was faster on the road bike.  Why?  I think it's because I've not ridden hills on the tribike much and am not yet comfortable with 40+mph on the aero bars.  I was on the bullhorns and not really tucked, but still managed 39.7 mph, so with some position tweaking 40+ won't be hard and if I can get comfortable in aero at the higher speeds, well that would have to be on a closed course I think.

3) Climbing the bigger hills.  The one hill of note on the Vineman course is Chalk Hill, 220 foot climb over 3/4 of a mile.  On all my rides on the road bike, I had to go to my lowest gear and make the climb out of the saddle.  Yesterday on the tribike, it was the lowest gear but I never had to get off the saddle, making the entire climb seated and not feeling totally gassed.  Bike geometry?  Don't know but will definitely have to go find some more hills to understand and to figure out the downhill side as well.

4) Overall.  I felt much stronger at the end of the ride.  Thought it was just because I wasn't racing it or pushing it as I did during training, but my average speed was 1 mph faster than any training ride and 0.5 mph faster than the race time.  I looked at the HR data and found my average was z2.9, so not really pushing it.

As I said earlier, there were a lot of variables that make a true comparison difficult, but thought I'd share this as just an interesting data point.

I was surprised as well.  When I started the hill I planned to stay seated as long as I could, and was surprised when I rounded the curve and saw the top.  Thought it might be gearing as I have a compact crank on my tribike, so checked out the ratio.  Turns out the 39-27 on my road bike has a ratio of 1.4, and the 34-25 on my P2 has a ratio of 1.4, so that's not it.  I'm going to have to find some more hills to figure out what this all means.  I've got a good one near home here I'll give a go:

Was thinking of getting a 11-28 for the tribike for hillier terrain, but think some I need to do the additional hill work first to see if I really need it.  There is another hill climb that is really brutal that I can choose to test out as well - 45 minutes of easiest possible gear.  I've done it on my road bike a few times but may have to take the P2 out there.  The downhill is kinda technical though, so need to wait until I feel more comfortable on the downhills at speed on the P2.

John, sound like you planned the race and raced to plan!  Congrats on meeting your goal and on getting the negative split.  Now that you've got that 'negative split feeling' and know you can pull it off, you can use it in future race plans too.  I always like I've run a good race if I feel like I finished strong, and the negative split is one way to get there.

I got back into the pool today with my dislocated/fractured ring finger buddy taped to the middle finger, but after about 500 yards could tell it was not going to work.  It was beginning to get painful from the bending back during the pull.  There was a guy in the next lane who I chat with occasionally, and he was using swim paddles and told me to try them as they would allow the pressure to be spread across the paddle, not directly on the finger.  I tried them and they seemed to work pretty well.  They were the Finis Agility paddles which are not designed to increase strength, but rather to ensure you have a good entry and early pull.  As such, they don't have a lot of additional drag compared to your hand, but enough I could feel it after swimming about 400 more.  Went to the Finis store (Yup, corporate headquarters is located nearby and they have a retail outlet there!) and they fitted me to the medium, not the large I had used in the morning.  Hope it works out so I can swim!

Another first today was my first run after bruising my heel in the Oly about 3 weeks ago.  Kept it short (3.5 miles) and kept in the aerobic zone so pace of about 8:44/mi.  No pain during the run and will see what the next 24 hours bring.  Hoping for the best.

Hey Ana, I just saw this posting over on Tri Talk "Plant Powered Triathlete (Vegan)" and thought you might be interested:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=489436&posts=14&page=1

In that thread someone mentions that there have been quite a few threads on this in the "Nutritional Café" forum as well.  I imagine there is some discovery to be done to make sure one who is an athlete gets the proper nutritional balance, especially protein, when moving to a vegan lifestyle.  Gotta make sure your muscles are getting what they need to get stronger and stay healthy.

David, that looks like a really nice build.  My P2 is an Ultegra build, my Trek roadbike is a Dura Ace build.  I love my P2, but if I could have gotten it in a Dura Ace, I would have done so as it is a true step up.  The shifting is much smoother; that's the biggest difference I find between the two.  The deal I got was $2,350 and was happy with that.  I would say that if you can get the P2 Dura Ace for anything close to that, definitely go for it.

Did I mention how much it sucks to get back into the pool after being out for a measly 3-4 weeks?  A lot.  I cannot believe how quickly swimming fitness degrades.  I'm only hoping the recovery period is as rapid!

So Jesse, training over the next X months . . .   I'm going long next year, with my A race being the Vineman full on July 26.  For race training plans I'm considering the BT 20 week HR based program or alternatively the 12 week training program offered by the Vineman organizers and written by Dave LaTourette.  I used the Vineman plan (also 12 weeks) for my half and was really pleased with it, it fit into my lifestyle from a training standpoint, and I beat what I thought would be my best possible time by 19 minutes, so although it seems like a short training plan, it merits consideration.  If I go that way the pre-training plan training plan will have to build to a slightly higher level.  Unfortunately you don't get the whole plan in advance, it comes to you in installments as you progress, so it is tough to compare to other plans (I do have the 70.3 plan in its entirety that I could send if you want to see how it looked).  That all being said, I do like the way the BT plan integrates into both your training log and onto my Outlook calendar, so a few considerations.  For the time being, I'm going to assume a 20 week plan so that I can focus on the winter training.

If I count back the weeks, I need to get my butt into a plan starting next week.  I am looking at loosely following the BT Winter Maint/Prep - 7 to 10 Hours - 20 Week plan.  For the bike part, I think I'm going to do the TrainerRoad Intermediate Base II plan followed by the Intermediate Build I plan, doing 2-3 TR sessions each week and add in a 2-3 hour long ride.  I've been really happy with the progress I've seen working with TR, and it gives me good structure to do workouts I would otherwise not do.  For the swims, I've got to admit I'm not a real fan of drills, so I'll modify those workouts to add in 50/100/200/400 intervals to make up the distance when it calls for a lot of drill time (question: Why do so many plans incorporate long kicking drills when in a tri kicking is really not a key part of the focus in the swim?).

As of today I'm on track for the bike in terms of being able to follow the program I outlined above, for the run should be OK.  Ihad to take 3 weeks off with a bruised heel, but was able to do a 5-miler last week keeping HR in the aerobic zone and keeping my pace under 9:00/mile (sort of a benchmark).  The swim I'm a bit behind as you may have guessed from my opening line, but it'll be recoverable.  I'm already finding I'm having to tell myself this is offseason and the key part of the workouts will be form-related and building aerobic capacity - not pushing to hit peak training time results for each workout.  This could actually be one of the most important parts of the winter training as I struggle with dialing things down when racing to ensure I've got gas in the tank for the latter parts of the race.  Ought to be interesting, no?

OK, open to thoughts, guidance, wtf are you thinking, etc.  Time to let the fun begin!