Well, my season has officially kicked off. On Saturday, I participated in the Guelph Lake Olympic Triathlon at the Guelph Lake Conservation Area in… you guessed it… Guelph. All in all, it was a pretty good day for me and I’m generally happy with my results and with the event itself. I managed to take advantage of the increased training load this season and drop a few new PRs, test out some new equipment and skills, and still have some…
I get to celebrate the end of a HUGE accomplishment (for me). I’m in my last week right now of Trainer Road’s Sweet Spot Base High Volume. Holy cow does this thing WORK! I’ve put on over 50 watts from my first FTP test, and I’m sure I’ll add at least another 10-15 on my next test (Tuesday). That’s a ton of growth. I’m celebrating because its hard and I’m sticking at it. It’s a lot of cycling, and my…
Earlier this week I saw a tweet from GCN @gcntweet asking about a cycling component that I’d “dream of owning.” Naturally there was just one answer that I have right now, though to be fair there are quite a few. One of the pricier things I’d love is a new turbo trainer. I’m currently using a Kurt Kinetic turbo that is in the “old” style – I’m fairly sure. It is about 11 years old, and has actually held up…
I’m busting out of this rut. Here’s what’s up. This morning I had a terrible ride. That makes 2 of the last 4 rides being awful, with the others being not particularly great. Antelope +5 is 7 x 10 min in the sweet spot over 2 hrs. Should be do-able. I’ve done it before. It’s actually kind of fun. But it sucked, hard. So hard in fact that I stopped my ride mid-ride. I finished the first hour and quit….
Such a strange workout week. Dealing with two completely distinct issues: My back/sciatica. I posted twice this week already about my back, so I won’t go into detail about it again here. The pain is still there in my lower back area, though it is getting less and Advil seems to handle the worst of the pain. I’m doing physio exercises to strengthen the area and am hopeful that I have good, quick results. Not being in Aero is hell,…
Well if there was ever doubt in my mind about getting back into the swing of things, it is definitely 99% gone now. Since Monday, I’ve racked up 515 TSS (today being end of Wednesday) across all three disciplines. Whatever is going on in my back/leg doesn’t seem to be slowing me down. At least not much. I seem to be pretty much back to work across the board, and I’m pretty stoked about that. I did get to my…
Weekly Stats: Swim: 13750m, TSS 315.8 Bike: 233 km, TSS 550.5 Run: 27.6 km, TSS 236.5 Total Duration: 14:22 Total TSS: 1102.7 CTL: 127.2 ATL: 171.2 Form: -39.3 A very odd week. Monday & Tuesday were non-training days, so I tried to cram in lots of work through the rest of the week. I’m not really sure where to begin, or how to feel about this. Just a strange week. Unfortunate that I missed my TSS goal, but next week is…
Today was the first day of TrainerRoad’s Sweet Spot Base High Volume 2, which means… FTP Test! I knew that I was in for a bit of a bump, but was amazed to see a HUGE 17.6% increase in FTP. Pretty awesome. Since I’ve started using TrainerRoad about 7 weeks ago, I’ve shifted my FTP from 2.32 w/kg to 2.90 w/kg. That accounts for a whopping 24.9% increase. Obviously I’m thrilled with this, but how did I do it? And…
Weekly Stats: Swim: 4600m, TSS 103.1 Bike: 261 km, TSS 760.7 Run: 43.9 km, TSS 363.3 Total Duration: 14:39 Total TSS: 1227.1 CTL: 121.2 ATL: 177.9 Form: -37.5 With the pool closed again this week, I had to make up some TSS in the other two disciplines. I also had a really lousy swim on one of my workouts, and I bailed after just 1400m, so really didn’t do much of anything in the pool this week. My arms were feeling…
My new set of Blade Carbon Wheels showed up today. I’m pretty excited to hit the road with them! The weather tonight disagreed, but I’ll have a better chance over the next few days to get some time with them. It is hard to write about new wheels that haven’t been ridden on yet, but I’ll include some photos of how things looked as I unboxed and installed the wheels. This isn’t a formal review, just some photos and some quick…