HTT #9

Saturday morning, went to Lagoon drive. Did a one-loop ride warmup up and down Lagoon Drive and then went right into the workout. The workout was exactly the same one as this day in last year's clinic.

The plan was to do three iterations of the following: One bike loop up and down Lagoon Drive (~4 miles), followed by running two loops around a coned-off section of the park (~1k total). This added up to a total of 12 miles of bike and 3k of run, not including the warm-up bike or the cool-down jog around the entire grassy area of the park. Excluding the warm-up/cool-down, I finished in about 1h8m, although I didn't stop my watch right when I finished, so it's within a minute or so. That's a full four minutes faster than last year, and I felt much stronger through the whole thing this time. It probably helped that I didn't wake up feeling ill and I was able to eat a big bowl of oatmeal that morning.

Overall, I'm happy with how I did. My goal was to be the first female to finish along with giving it a very strong effort, and I succeeded in both. I alternated pulling/drafting on the bike with G (this was condoned by the coaches). I think I benefitted from that far more than he did. I'm no where near as strong a biker as he his, so I'm quite sure I did more drafting, also since I'm smaller he doesn't benefit as much in the draft as I do. He also helped me on the final run with challenging me to pick up the pace on the last leg of it (that was HARD).

This time around I made sure to eat and drink. I opened up an energy bar at the start of the second run and took a few bites during each following transition. I also took a gel before the last run as I was pretty beat by then. Still, it was all good. I think I put pretty much everything I had into it and paced myself fairly well the whole way. I was annoyed at how ragged I felt in the run, but I never walked and I pushed myself the entire time.

One nice thing, a fellow in our group came up to me and commented on how strong I was, in both the bike and the run. This surprised me. I don't expect other people to really take notice of my performance, and I hadn't noticed him out on the course, granted I was entirely inwardly-focused during this. Also, I thought my run was particularly slow and ugly. That taken into account, it was nice to know that I looked better than I felt. Also, one of the coachs said "You really tried hard today, didn't you?" I should be self-validating I know, but it still makes me feel good to have a hard effort recognized.

After the workout and stretching, there was a flat tire clinic. I've seen several of these, but I always learn something new. In this case, there was quite a bit:

1.) The most interesting but was how if it's your back tire that's flat, you don't have to unscrew it, you just flip the lever and lift the bike, the tire pops right off. Apparently it's just the front tire that has "lawyer lips" (seriously, that's what they're called) to keep the tire from popping off accidentally should the lever be open. I guess it's a far more serious accident if the front tire comes off instead of the back one, so only the front has it. Anyway, how cool to know I don't have to mess with that anymore.

2.) It's important to keep the back tire's lever closed inside the two frame bars going to the tire. If you close it outside of those, there's a slight possibility that someone else's tire could get in the space between it and your tire and flip it open or bring you both down. If you close it on the frame, it's much harder to open. So, that leaves the space between the frame bars.

3.) I REALLY need to change my CO2 tool. It turns out that I can get the tool that handles non-threaded CO2 cartridges and then I can use the cheap cartidges for paint ball guns. The threaded ones are like 8$ for a pack of two, and the non-threaded paint-ball ones come in a case of about 40 for 8$. They said that the paint-ball ones will fill your tire to about 90psi rather than the ideal 100, but if it's good enough for our iron-man coaches, it's good enough for me.

4.) Changing gear after the tire is off: If you forget to switch down to the smallest ring on the back before taking that back tire, you can switch it while the tire is off. The derailer will just move over and when you put the tire back on, just line up the chain with the smallest ring, it's already good to go. I don't know why I never thought about that, it made total sense when he said it, but I've always gone through the irritation of switching the gear before taking off the tire. This is sooo much easier.

5.) When putting the back tire on again, if it resists going on, just press down on the derailer, the tire should pop right into place. I always struggle with this a little, and he made it look so easy.

6.) I never knew what the little hooks were for on the other side of the tire removal sticks. It turns out that when you need to use more than one, you put the first one in the tire and then flip it down to bring the lip of the tire over the rim, and then you put the little hook on one of your spokes to hold it in place. How did I not figure that out on my own? I'm apparently just a dunce when it comes to bikes and I need to be told everything.

I think I'll have to sit in front of the TV and practice all this a few times to cement it in my head.

On a side note, even though today is Easter, the bike shop was open. I got tri-bars installed along with a new bike computer that does cadence. I'm looking forward to trying my new toys, but I have to wait until Wednesday.