Honey I was just going to go look for you. That is the comment my wife made when I got home today after riding for 3 hours 15 minutes. The reason Kelly mentioned that is because the wind was absolutely going nuts. At one point I had to get off the saddle and stand up to pedal hard because the wind literally had stopped me. The last 10 miles which are almost totally into a head wind took me about an hour. I got home and I asked my wife to take the picture here for the blog. That US flag is a flag that I received as a present from one of my “extended coaching” athletes who works in Afghanistan. The flag was flown there at his base during the US operations there. Thanks Kim.
Boulder is situated right at the base of the Rocky Mountains and anytime there is a cold front the wind that precedes the cold front is very stiff. Normally I would have ridden another day but the cold front is going to bring very low temperatures and snow. So I decided to go train in the wind.
The wind is a very different beast. It is sort of invisible, it slows you down and it knocks you around. This is definitely not pleasant. But if you can keep your mind composed you will be fine. I just try to remember two things. Shift down and keep a good pedaling cadence. This will keep you moving. Heart rate training is essential here. If you keep your heart rate in the target range you will know that you are maintaining the best pace possible. It is just slower but who cares. If this was a race it will be the same for everyone. Just keep moving.
The ride today was not all slow. There was a 10 mile stretch where I had the tail wind from heaven. At one point I was going about 33 miles per hour. I was running out of gears on a flat stretch! Some wings added and I would have taken off with the eagles.
This sort of training rides can come in handy for those races were you will face similar winds. The Hawaii Ironman comes to mind for me for sure. But surely it can happen anywhere on any given day. One word of caution for smaller folks; if you are smaller you actually struggle more because of the lack of upper body strength to keep the bike upright. Plus a heavier rider means the tires will grab the ground a little tighter thus keeping your bike grounded. Always bring your cell phone like I did today. If it gets out of hand you can stop and call for a pick up or a Taxi.
Here is a quick update on my hamstring injury. I have only run 1 mile in the past 2 weeks. My hamstring injury did not feel good on my test run last week so I decided to keep rehab and water running. I consulted some experts and it looks like my problem stems from tight quadriceps and illiopsoas muscles. These cause my hips to tilt forward and as a result lengthen my hamstrings. The hamstrings attach to the bottom back side of the hips bones. If the hamstrings are being pulled by the hips then they will complain at some point when you load them up during runs and rides. That was the source of my strain. So the goal is just not to heal the hamstring but also to stretch my quads and illiopsoas muscles. Plus strengthen other core muscles to maintain my hips balanced. I know we have many PT and anatomy experts on our team so please feel free to comment on this injury.
My swimming is also going well. If you read some of my posts you remember me complaining about masters swimming and the lack of distance training. I did a little complaining to the master’s coaches and they have tried to help me out. See, masters swimming as I have told many of my athletes is not always geared towards triathletes training for the mile or 2.4 mile swim. At my club if the masters coach gives any long sets with swims of 300 or more he loses half the swimmers. They literally get out of the pool and go home. What a bunch of softies. But the reality is that at a club, the master’s coach needs to keep the members happy. So if people leave because of 400 yard swims you can guess what is going to happen. So now, they take me and a couple of other swimmers and literally hurt us on Mondays which are now ‘distance’ days. Last Monday the coach gave me a 3400 yard main set where my send off interval was less and less as we went along. It hurt but I made it and I was very happy in the end. Is that masochism? Oh yeah I had to do it by myself but the coach hung out and did a little encouraging towards the end when I needed it the most. Thanks coach.