Thanksgiving weekend included lots of turkey and lots of good workouts.
I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving! Sandwiched between really busy weeks at work, mine was wonderful. I got a good 5k practice run in before Turkey time, and then a nice, long walk with friends after dinner. I got some good rides in on my mountain bike and my road bike and a really nice trail run at dusk to cap off the weekend on Sunday night.
As wonderful as the four-day weekend was, when Monday morning came around it seemed like all of my clients wanted to close every deal right away, so the past week was a blur of assignments, conference calls and deadlines -- with zero time to train. Yesterday was the Ginger Snap 5k in Waxhaw, which is race #1 in my winter race ladder, so I was curious how the race would go after five full days without any training!
Race Ladder: Race #1 - GingerSnap 5k in downtown Waxhaw, NC
A 5k after five days of zero training is sub-optimal, but that's what it was as I lined up at 8 am outside the Bike Depot for the start of the Ginger Snap 5k. The race was a tough little race as I went out hard to get past all the girls running with their parents. I love Girls on the Run and think they are a great organization -- my daughter did her one and only 5k race with them, -- but be prepared not to PR at one of their races! The first half-mile was super crowded with hundreds of little girls, parents and family members, but once I passed those groups and got out on the main road I had some space to settle in to my race pace. I am still pretty run de-trained so to keep a 9:00-9:30 min/mile pace had my heart rate up above 165-170 bpm so it was shaping up to be a pretty painful run. Waxhaw has lots of little rollers and this straight out and back course contained its fair share. I was already running so high up in zone 4 of my heart rate zones that I did not have a lot of extra space for hills, so each hill brought me pretty close to my max. After the halfway point, I slowed down to walk the aid station and get some water and then tried to keep a good pace going back in. This worked okay until the big stinger hill at mile 2.7 or so, which slowed me down quite a bit. At the crest of the hill, the finish line was in sight and I came in at 32:27. So I did not get to finish the race in under 30 minutes, but I did get to put in a really hard effort with the whole race close to my maximum heart rate at a pace of 10:26 min/mile. If I can start out a bit slower and hold that pace for my 10k in January, I think that would be a good result. Thanks to Teelo and Trez of the Bike Depot Waxhaw for the support!
Tri Bike Fit for 2018
In talking through 2018 race planning with my coach Kelly Fillnow, Kelly was very insistent that I start using and getting comfortable on my tri bike for 2018. I bought a Felt IA16 in 2016 and just never got comfortable on it. A Retul fit with Chris at Uptown Cycles helped, but not enough and I felt so overloaded with new information last year that I just stayed with my road bike and never wanted to pick up my tri bike. I paid for that choice big time at IRONMAN 70.3 NC as the stiff headwinds killed my speed up in a road bike even when I got as low as I could in the drops. I also paid on the run course as I my quads and lower back were pretty shelled from 56 windy miles on a road bike.
So today, I went back to Uptown Cycles where my Felt was, ridiculously, in storage there all year, for this coming year of 2018 will be my year of conquering the tri bike. Last year, Chris swapped out the stock bars and bullhorns for a Zipp Vuka Aero set that was very adjustable, and we raised the bars and angled them up. Today, we lengthened the aero bars significantly, which gave me more space up front and straighter back. As a big guy, I feel very compressed between my chest and arms when I am down in aero, so I was encouraged by what a difference the extra length in the aero bars made.
Onwards and Upwards... but how far up?
Last week, I decided to let my guaranteed entry to the Chicago Marathon lapse. After all the disappointments for 2017, I didn't want to have a huge race on the calendar for the end of the year at this early stage. Also, I have some friends who are registered for IRONMAN Louisville in October 2018 and I want to go and cheer them on. This led to an interesting hypothetical with Kelly: if I am well-trained at the end of June for IRONMAN 70.3 Mont-Tremblant and I succeed at my main weight loss goal, would it be possible to ramp up the endurance in 3-plus months to do IRONMAN Louisville in October? Kelly, being a coach, gave an unequivocal, enthusiastic yes. Since Louisville doesn't sell out, I can keep that thought in that back of my mind as we train up for Tremblant in the Spring.