Rainy season. The end of bike commuting?

Or the beginning of "the tough get going."

Riding home in the rain tonight from the train station wasn't too bad. It's all uphill so you warm up fast and the rain soaking in feels good in a way, which offsets the increasing wetness. Proper rain gear would help. Need to get over to an REI. Looks like they are the only place big enough to be serious about actually stocking gear you can look at before you buy.

Well OK then.

Work stress. Had lots of it.

One thing that helped this summer, which was a very moderately cool summer, was riding my bicycle the train, thus taking away all freeway commute stress.

Just be careful if you are into bicycling for fitness and you get a Hyperfold Tikit from Bike Friday, because it may not stand up to mashing on the pedals like a normal enthusiast bike. At least not 100% of the time. Like a lot of bikes with 1x drivetrains it may drop the chain if provoked.

Still though. Folding bikes on the train for the win.

Argh.

That inexplicable ease should have been an omen about something.

Missed the event due to epic dumbness. Should be able to make the July one though. It is scheduled at a time of high work stress though so now I've got something to be anxious about for that one at least!

So not anxious about this next race that it is making me anxious.

Hockey playoffs took a big bite out of my workout time recently, I will admit. Then there was an action packed business trip. Now it is race week and I haven't been doing bricks. Haven't been to the pool in a while. Haven't tried out the wetsuit I rented last weekend.

But hey, tonight after work 400 yards in the pool was quite easy. Nothing important had been forgotten. In fact I even picked up a new to me tip of taking an extra long glide every lap or two to get in one deeper than usual breath and it seemed to help alleviate that slow-running-down feeling that builds up as the laps go by. 9 minutes for 16 laps of a 25M pool is not fast but for me it was pretty good considering that I felt better coming out of the pool than I did going in.

Should be able to squeeze in a bit of lake swim this week after work as Lake Temescal is only a few minutes away. Worst case, only open water practice will be the day before the race. Already took that day off just to give myself time to recover from last week's trip.

So much for short posts.

Going full nerd this time

Rented a wetsuit tonight. Will get in a couple of test swims before the next sprint tri. Only 12 days to go. Much much less anxious this time. Gonna have a nice float across the lake breathing steadily instead of the 12 minute breath-holding dog paddle fest from last time.

At least that is the plan.

Healthy again at least.

Haven't been doing much special training lately. Weather this year has been very strange. At least now it is a bit warmer and the trails dry out faster after a rain.

Might buy a wetsuit this week. If nothing looks good in the local stores (and it seems really odd that the SF area doesn't seem to have at least one good we-have-everything store for Tri gear) I may just order one of the $99 Xterra ones as I'll get at least 3 uses out of it this year and that beats renting 3 times easily.

Never too experienced to make a rookie mistake

Upped my running to 4 consecutive weekdays per week, from 2 (Tu Th) to try and get my dog some more intensity in his excercise, and my left hip has some kind of spasm that has lingered even though I've now taken 3 days off.

Might have to take the old "mountain bike" out on some days to get the dog his higher tempo workout while taking it easy on me.

Too bad he can't lane swim with me.

Awfully quiet around here lately.

Just reread my race report from the first tri. Full of typos. Usually I catch that stuff, but I must have been too excited to take the time before posting. Good stuff.

One of the followups identified in the post-race analysis was a need to do more brick workouts. It's been a good year for that so far. Lots of swim-run at the gym.

"Swimming downhill"

Have been scouring the interwebs and this seems to be the most common bit of jargon describing what I need to work on. Press your sternum down they say. Press it with what I ask.

In principle it makes lots of sense and I'm sure I'll get there eventually. For now I am just trying to reinforce the improvement in breathing. It is making it possible for me to swim 2x as far in each workout and come out feeling much fresher than I used to. Good things are already happening to my rotation and my pull. Woo.

What does it mean if?

So, what does it tell me if I can swim twice as fast with a pull buoy than without, and with less effort to boot?

Today's workout was a revelation even before experiencing the above. I finally was able to exhale a steady constant flow of air between breaths without any hitches or tenseness. It felt so much better. The sensation of holding my breath or being short of air was completely gone. Even without the pull buoy I was able to swim much better and didn't feel like I was burning energy too fast to keep up.

Off to the interwebs now to figure out how to get my lower body up with better technique.

Oh, the combination of the better breathing and the buoy also allowed me to finally be able to focus on better rotation, which is probably where a lot of the "free" speed came from. Glide per stroke was so much better it was ridiculous.

The best laid plan

Hanging on the wall next to my desk is an 8.5x11 scrap of paper with a rough plan that should put me in place to have some success in the Tri for Fun in June. The main focus is on two things. One, ramping up swimming volume a lot with a goal of increasing competence there, and making it so I can come out of the water without having taxed myself too bad just to complete the swim. Two, bringing up the overall volume so that a ~70 minute high intensity effort is routine.

Overall volume will not grow too much week over week, but in the next 5 months it will be up noticeably overall, hopefully without taking too much of a bite out of the rest of my life. Past experience says that if I can fit it in without stressing about scheduling, I'll feel a lot better day to day.

Longer days can't be back too soon.

Got home early enough to run before dark. Very convenient, that.

The Garmin's battery was dead because it is my only PC dependent device anymore. Gonna have to get some kind of Mac sync capability.