Women Ready to Tri - OPEN (Page 5)

How hard were you riding?  What do you use to make sure you're riding at the right intensity level (HR, RPE, power)?  Cramping is often due to pushing harder than your fitness level will allow, so you may want to try to go easier than you think you need to, eat and drink a couple hundred calories per hour, and keeping track of how you feel throughout. 

You can take in more on the bike than you can on the run, so make sure you're eating and drinking enough on the bike, and then do what you can on the run.  For both, go easier than you think you need to....until the last third of the run or so -- then you can give it all you have left.

Yep, that sounds about right!  For what it's worth, I absolutely think you can do an Olympic distance!

A few weeks a go, my coach put a 4:30 ride on my schedule.  I'm training for a 70.3 distance race, so the bike leg should take somewhere around 2:30....which means 4:30 is really long!  Made even longer by the oppressive heat and humidity in Houston.  I made it 2:30 in and was feeling alright and then I hit the wall.....40 minutes of fighting a brutal headwind and my mind and legs were absolutely over it.  I thought to myself, "See, this is why you don't sign up for an Ironman.  Ironman training would be dumb.  You need to remember this feeling if you ever get the itch to sign up for one, because it would be dumb....and this wouldn't even be a long ride for Ironman training."  And then I turned around and got a tailwind and life was better again....finished strong and though, "Maybe I could do one...."  Luckily I don't have the Ironman itch....and if I ever do, I'll have to sign up for one in the Southern Hemisphere because I do NOT want to be doing super long rides and runs in the middle of Houston summers!

I went down pretty hard on my bike almost three weeks ago (a dog got out of its fence and bee-lined toward me from only a few feet away -- I knew if I ran it over, I was going down, so I tried to swerve around it and still went down).  Was a pretty miserable couple weeks, but I was able to get back into some light training about five days later.  As of this week, I'm finally pain-free (still some minor discomfort in my ribs, but not what I'd consider pain) and was able to get back into real training.

I'm headed out to TX Hill (wine) Country with some girlfriends this weekend so we'll be doing a bit of swimming, a LOT of biking, and a long run....plus a few wine tasting appointments.  Very much looking forward to getting away for the weekend

Hope everyone else is doing well with training and racing.  It's been quiet in here.....maybe we can get things restarted! 

Which HIM are you looking at and when?  What's your training been like recently?  How's your swimming and biking?