SBR "U" (Page 69)

Sounds like road bike was the right call.  Looking forward to hearing more about it.  

Battery change on the Quarq seemed to have solved my power drop out issues.  I figure I got around 200 hours of total time the unit would have been on (including stoppage time) so sounds about right.  I think the last time my battery died though it just went from reading correctly to nothing at all in an instant.  Oh well.

Set a new 8.5 minute power PR yesterday.  Felt strong, and I think I've got a much better hold of balancing my training this year.  Road race this weekend, and Haleakala 2 weeks after that.

I posted it over on ST, but if there's one thing that would make me hesitant to do this race again, it's the road surfaces.  Put 2000 athletes on an out and back course with bombing downhills and some very VERY bad road surfaces......   Saw one crash this year, in almost the exact same spot I saw a crash last year, the Legion of Honor section.  Bad pavement, downhill, foggy and hard to see.  Woman I saw was beat up pretty badly, being put into an ambulance.

I suppose this is the argument for being on the bottom deck, they put 40+ on second deck, 39 below first deck.  At a young 40, Arend can pull off the lower deck.  Me not so much.  So if you are stuck on top you are stuck with the bike crowd.  I am not podiuming anyway, so I don't see the need to hammer any of this course.  I bet it would be much different starting first with a fast-ish swim.

Although it was interesting comparing my progress on a roadie to those on TT bikes.  The "average" AGer really has no need for a tri bike here.  I was passing a lot of them (and I'm not that great of a cyclist).  The more serious contenders, sure.  

334w.  In theory, I probably could have squeezed out 340 as I wasn't really pacing it as an all out effort for 8.5 minutes.  It was part of a group ride where I attacked and stayed off the front on a shallow 3% climb.  Once I knew my gap would hold up...I kind of eased back a little before realizing that there wasn't the normal headwind (ETA: I also was test running my race wheels, tires, latex tubes ), and I could crush this Strava segment...so I turned the gas back on till the end.  So it sort of looked like 370 watts for the first 90 seconds, 315 for the middle 5 minutes, and 360 for the last 2 minutes.

So as painful as it sounds, I'll likely be on the trainer this week.  I scratched my cornea yesterday morning as I was lazy with my contacts over the previous few days and slept with them on.  I suppose my eyes were really dry when I tried to take them off and my left eye got scratched.  This has happened before, and usually takes a few days before it self heals.  

It does feel better today, but no contacts probably till this weekend...and my eye is still very sensitive to sunlight...so no riding outdoors.  Thankfully this is just a prep week for my road race this weekend, so mostly just spinning with a few short efforts here and there...nothing sufferfest like.

I got fed up with this kind of thing and finally ordered some prescription Oakleys.  My eyesight isn't terrible so I don't absolutely NEED correction, but it's a nice-to-have.  If you keep checking, sometimes glasses.com has 30% off deals.

Alcatraz RR is up.

It's kinda long, tl;dr version is that I suck at transitions.

Great write-up Arend (sorry, I spelled your name wrong in the RR) It's great you guys got to get together! 

I think you would've liked that run course

Maybe a bit short for her liking?  

So a little bit of panic has now crept in as I get ready for the HIM on Sunday - temperatures have changed and a wave of humidity is settling in.  Almost al my training has been done in weather in the mid 70's, and race day weather is no prediciting temps up to 90 thanks to the humidity.  I'm a wimp in the heat to begin with, but even moreso when I've done no training at these temps.

So, looking for a little advice.  On the bike I'll aim for a slightly lower power number than originally planned, but on the run the idea was to mostly pace by HR and hope that run pace would align, if not then back off a bit.  Plan to still use this strategy, however I reckon I'll have to accept I'm going to likely run much slower than I had hoped for.

My key concern are liquids/salts/electrolytes.  Original plan was 1 bottle of gatorade on the bike, up to 3 bottles of water (along with a banana and 4 gels).  Then on the run it was just water + some calories within every 5km stretch (nothing too specific).  But I'm worried that I'll be sweating much more and may need more sodium/electrolytes.  I consdiered Nunn tablets but have never added anything to my water/drinks in the past, it would be totally new for me.  Thoughts?

I am on the trainer now...it sucks...royally...that is all

Yeaaaah, nice try guys. I will not be tricked into entering a "swimmers" race where there are sharks and now possibly drone attacks.

And I actually ran a short race on Tuesday, a 4K

Here is the race report

Well you clearly have no sense of adventure!

My line up top, Arend's on bottom.  Arend posted his strava feed and reported that his speed dropped dramatically at the end.  My feed showed a slowdown much later as I got closer to shore and angled in, maybe last 200 yds.  Speed for the first 500 yards was well below 1:00/100.  First mile popped up on the garmin at 11:3X.  I was definitely on the left side of the main pack the entire time, very few people to my right.

NB**  This in no way implies a strategy on my part to take a better line, or an analysis of the currents and a conscious choice to stay outside.  In other words, dumb luck and just going where a bunch of other folks seemed to be going.

BOOM.

Ben, you just won the internet today!

Seriously. I've got nothing.

Neil - I am sure that you have read the active thread in TT that has a lot of good pointers, so I won't repeat any of that. a couple of specific things I can add is to 1) stay out of the sun/heat as much as possible the day before. With an IM/HIM race you can spend a lot of time out in it the day before and I actually think that is where a lot of people get cooked. 2) I wear a visor all the time on the run, and in a really hot race I will sometimes turn it upside down (not backwards like Arend) and the bill will then holdwater and ice in it that way.

FWIW, I am lucky  in that I seem to do very well in the heat and humidity compared to many others, which is fortunate as that is pretty much what we get here. And while certainly physiological I do think a big part of it is mental as well. During hot humid races I remind myself that I actually like it, and that others don't, and that as bad as I might feel they are suffering worse. That seems to give me a little psychological boost.

Slowly heal upping up from my crash - I have lots of new, pink baby skin coming in. Perhaps a little ironically I am back on the bike a little, but still not able to run or swim, and working through some hip flexor issues. It is still REALLY. painful to walk around in shoes, and I t will probably be a couple of weeks yet before I can swim or run. So my race season is a little bit in the weeds at the moment.

ETA: off to get on the trainer myself, Jason. Yuk. Maybe I will at least spin over to our kid's team practice this afternoon. We are working on transitions today and they have their first team race of the season this weekend.

Just thought I'd point out that they DO allow relay teams

What would be the point of going all the way to San Francisco and skipping the best part of the race??  

Probably a fine line to walk between what I did, what you did and overshooting the beach.  Makes me want to do it again.