Tri Training Begins: Bike Run Trial

Triathlon training has begun!

Swim: I joined a gym with a pool. I signed up for some 1/2 hour lessons with a swim instructor who came highly recommended by a friend. (She has experience teaching children, so she’s patient and can start from the very beginning, but has also coached adults for triathlons, making her a perfect fit!)

Bike: I went to the gym to scope everything out and sign paperwork prior to my first lesson on Wednesday (eep!) and did a bike/run trial. I thought it’d be fun to get a baseline estimate for how long it’d take and how it’d feel to do 15 miles on the bike and then a 3 mile run. It’ll also be neat to gauge my current fitness level is so I can see growth between here and July.

It took me about 40 minutes to bike 15 miles, but then my legs and body were tired from the cycling and it took me much longer than usual (35 minutes) to run 3 miles on the treadmill afterwards. Part of it was the feeling of switching leg muscles, but I think more of it was that the entire time on the stationary bike I kept thinking of the 15 mile marker as being “the end” and I rode all out trying to accurately gauge how fast I could cycle 15 miles. That didn’t leave much left for the run.

I’ll have to learn to pace at least a little bit for the race so I am able to enjoy the run portion rather than crashing.

Accuracy of stationary bikes: I’ve been going to spin class once or twice a week recently, and sometimes the stationary bikes say I completed 13 miles, sometimes they say 7, once I hit 18, all in a 50 minute spin class where I’m exerting enough effort to break a healthy sweat. I am sure there’s some variance between days depending on how good I feel, but I doubt that I only hit the 7 mile mark in 50 minutes of biking on a day I had sweat dripping down my arms.

Indoor bikes aren’t going to be completely reliable. They’re not going to be calibrated perfectly, there’s going to be variance, and there’s a huge difference between biking on a stationary bike when you can easily adjust the gears to fit your cadence vs. biking outside where you don’t control the hills, and need to knowledgeably switch gears to maximize your biking performance.

I need to do some outdoor biking: I won’t really know how long it takes me to bike 15 miles until I do it outside. It’s going to depend on the terrain, the weather, the bike, my comfort level with switching gears, and so many other variables. Looking outside right now, all I can see is a blanket of white, because we’re in the middle of the snowstorm… so all that is going to have to wait! In the meantime, doing some indoor cycling will develop those muscles so I’m ready to hit the great outdoors come spring.

Wait… what about that half marathon in May? While I’m incredibly excited about this triathlon, I have a half marathon in May that I need to prepare for first! It never hurts to be in great half marathon shape, and when it’s over in the middle of May, I’ll still have 2 months to step up my biking and swimming for July. So while swim lessons once a week are fantastic, and I don’t want to lose my cycling muscles, I don’t need to be spending 5 days a week on the stationary bike in February at the cost of my long runs.

I’ll try to keep running a focus for now, while still doing a little base building in the swimming and cycling categories. I don’t want to peak early, I don’t want to burn out schedule-wise, and I want this to be fun and manageable.

I don’t ask for much, do I.