So as much as I hate to swim I love to bike. Just for the record although I am so very bad at swimming I try very hard. I have taken lessons galore and have swum 3x/week regularly for years. It just doesn't seem to help much. Here are some numbers for you to consider from my last half-ironman in June 2011. My swim time was faster than only 12% of the participants but my bike time was faster than 59% of them. So yes..the bike is my strength. I am a good endurance runner but not exactly speedy. My run time was faster than 41%. It should have been better though but my legs were mad at me. Aside from going into the race with a quad injury I made a cardinal mistake in the world of triathlons. I biked too fast and blew my legs out before I got to the run. I do this all the time and it is one of the big reasons for me getting a coach. Here's how my races usually go.....swim swim swim swim suck suck suck get out of the water look at clock and immediately get pissed off and start swearing that it took so long. Then I run into transition and easily find my bike in the ghost town and get even more pissed off and start making up words offensive to even my trucker's mouth. Then I get on my bike and ride the hell out of it because that is what I am good at. I pass people all over the place thinking in my head "Take that you @#$#^**@ smooth fast swimmer". This is the only time my competetive nature comes out. In these races they put your age on the back of your calf. If I see anyone younger ahead of me...especially male...look out... I am coming after you. While this makes for a smokin' bike time it also makes for a painful run. There is a general consensus in this sport that there is no such thing as a good bike and a bad run. Simply put..if you had a bad run it is because you went out too hard on the bike. I can't let this happen in Lake Placid. By the time we get to race day I will know at what percentage of my power threshold I should be riding in order to not blow up on the run. It's all in the coaching. Of the 25 IM's in the world, the Lake Placid bike course is ranked as the 6th most difficult. It has approx. 6000+ feet of elevation gain.
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| Elevation profile for one loop of bike course |
The course is 2 loops. I get to climb those mountain looking things twice. In all honesty it isn't the hills that scare me. It will hurt, I will be breathing hard but I have done that before. It is the one very long descent that scares the crap out of me. It begins at approx Mile 8 and lasts until Mile 14. Six miles downhill at blistering speeds. There are not one, not two but three of these in this stretch.
One wrong move, rock, dirt, pothole, another rider and you're done. A crash at these speeds will end your race and maybe....nuff said. Brave riders can get close to 50 mph here. That won't be me. The fastest I have ever hit has been 34 and I had a white knuckle grip on my handlebars. Scary. Oh yeah...I get to do that twice too. 112 miles is a long way and on my bike I will have drinks, food, spare tubes, tire levers, CO2 cartridges for filling a tube etc. I am currently working on my ability to change a flat and hope to be speedy and proficient by race day. I will also be praying regularly to the Patron Saint of No Flat Tires (Saint Michelin). There are support vehicles on the course to assist with mechanical repairs but they have to patrol 56 miles at a time so you can't count on them being readily available. There are aid stations every 10 miles or so where you can fill your bottles or grab some nutrition. There is also the Special Needs bike stop halfway through where you can leave a bag with clothes, food or whatever you want to have access to at the time. All aid stations have bathrooms but I have to tell you...there are a lot of athletes that just go on the bike. No kidding. Be careful who you ride behind. Not me....no way. All I need to do is hold back on the bike and stay out of harms way till I am safely back in transition again!
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Going up
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| Going down |
Just got a look at next week's training schedule. OOOOMMMMMGGGG. Time to put my big girl panties on cause it's gettin ugly!
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