Saturday, March 31, 2012

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Hello Nurse!

It is finally here.



Because of the spectacular weather we've had lately (sarcasm) I've only been able to ride it once outside and once on the trainer, but it's glorious. We had a little difficultly getting the magnet to activate the Quarq powermeter. I ended up filing down the magnet cable guide bracket and flipping it over so that it pointed up towards the bottom bracket and it works. My basic caveman understanding of the powermeter is that it should help me train in a particular power zone and then on race day, I can regulate my effort based upon power instead of heartrate. Today I'm doing a 30 minute test to establish a base.

Over the last couple months I've also been using Restwise. The goal of Restwise is to help you measure your recovery. Every morning I wake up and test my resting heart rate oxygen saturation with a meter that I clip onto a finger. I then weigh myself and answer a few questions about number of hours and quality of sleep, urine color (TMI, sorry), appetite, etc. It then produces a score that I track to see whether  my body is recovered for training. Here's a chart of my recovery over the last couple of weeks.


Green is better. You can see I had a day or two where I didn't get enough rest and my recovery was low.  My coach then adjusted my schedule to allow me to recover and I got back on track.

I leave for Memorial Herman Ironman 70.3 Texas in a few days. Dropping the kids off in Phoenix then heading to Texas. Last year I signed up for California 70.3 but had a frozen shoulder and couldn't get the training in to do the race. I'm looking forward to shaking off the cobwebs and gauging my fitness as I progress to IM Coeur d'Alene which is a mere 91 days away.

If you are reading this blog then you are interested in triathlons. I suggest you check out your results in Athlinks. It tracks your races by year and distance, and then determines who your rivals are based upon the participants in the race. It's Facebook for athletes.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Getting Closer

3 weeks until my first race, 70.3 Texas, and I haven't rode outside since September and my new ride is not yet finished.  It's getting closer though.