Biking

I had mentioned to Marty about a week ago that I had been feeling some painful stretching behind my left knee for a few weeks, to which he replied that it was most likely tendinitis. So a couple of days before the evil Valentine's Day Massacre marathon relay, he adjusted my bike seat by dropping it 3 mm and then gave me a super easy, restful week last week.

So on Saturday I met him and Bri for a 2 hour endurance ride. It was kinda cold, and I have no cold weather gear. Bri loaned me a jacket and some toe warmer booty thingies. I was happy that they like to ride easy in the winter. Not only did it give me a chance to ride with a "group" so to speak, it was nice just to have company and some more experienced riders to tell me what I'm doing wrong.

I found out that my approach to biking on hills (being self taught since I clipped in for the first time 5 years ago) was completely backwards. Whereas I would normally end up dropping my cadence way down on hills due to not knowing when to shift, I found out that it is for that exact reason why I always seem to give out on the bike. Apparently, stop me if you knew this (or don't, just let me believe somebody else was of the same belief as I) you are supposed to increase your cadence on a hill because slowing down engages your fast twitch muscles which brings on lactic acid build up more quickly....hmmm the science of it all. Well no $h!t. It makes so much sense now. I'm relieved almost, to find out that I'm not just a horrible biker and that there is indeed something I was doing wrong that can be corrected.

So on Sunday, Tim and I met Bri, Marty and Steffen for a broken brick. We did a 18.5 mile loop followed by a 20 minute run, then another 18.5 mile loop followed by a 10 minute run. They all took it easy the first loop and I was able to hang with everybody. The first run sucked. Then we started the second bike loop and I was left from the beginning. At first I felt a little disappointed, but in the end I actually think it helped me. I probably pushed harder to maintain the speed we had kept the first time around but I was by myself. I felt like if I had done that work out alone, I would have slowed way down, but part of me just kept trying to pedal so I wouldn't be that far back from the others. The last run sucked.

Surprisingly, I was not sore after either workout. Which means I'm probably in better shape than I thought I was or I need to be pushing even harder...not sure which. But my transition runs are stinking up the course at this point. I need to get on that.