Power Cranks, training, racing.

The last few weeks have been great. After Christmas, Jaimie and I went on holiday for a week to Tasmania, driving, camping, and day treks. We had a beautiful trip and the hilly long walks and easy short jogs were the best start to training.

I started training on January 12, and am happy with the progress so far. I am sticking to the same program each week, which makes it easy for me, easy routine. And plenty of rest, with two days off every week.

I’ve had to take a sick day today. I flew back from Brisbane two days ago and picked something up on the way.

I headed up to Brisbane last Wednesday to stay with my coach Alan Pitman, and his family, to train with his squad and race a long course triathlon in rural Queensland. I also went to see an infamous (among the squad) kinesiologist. I’ve seen him before and got plenty out of seeing him again.

I’d decided to race the Goondiwindi Triathlon (2/80/20) on my road bike, which has power cranks on it (click for picture-then the bottom left picture). I’ve only had the PC’s on my bike for 2 weeks, and was sure it was going to be very painful by the end of the race since the furthest I’d ridden in training on them was about 50km.

As the race went, I had a good swim and lead out of the water with Charlie Boyle just behind me. We worked well together on the bike, and I was feeling good on the power cranks and road bike as we kept our lead over the chasing riders. Until my pedal came loose, and fell off attached to my cleat! I had to wait a few (or 5) minutes until a motorbike carrying a photographer stopped and very luckily had the perfect alan-key in his bike tool kit. So I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the ride well with a group of age groupers who caught me as I got back on my bike. I pushed on the front of this pack as often as I  could because I was feeling ok, and wanted to get a really good training session from the race. My legs were heavy at the start of the run due to grinding more on the bike than my usual fast turnover on a regular tri bike. I approached the run as I would have my regular Sunday morning tempo run. I did a warm up, a few drills, a couple sprint run throughs, then after 1^st of 3  laps, I went for a 10km tempo effort (I’ll normally do 15km) then eased off and slowed right down to chat to a few mates over the last 4km as a warm down. It was a great training day. Good enough that I was still able to slowly run 21km the next day for my long run (1:40) (normally run 2+ hrs). I finished 4th in the race.

I was always under the impression that pedals self tightened as you pedaled! That is not true! Always tighten your pedals well, and have the correct tools for the job.

I can’t wait for my next race – Australian Long Course Championships in Huskinson. I’ll be on a new bike, and Jaimie will be doing her first triathlon the day before in the sprint event!

cheers

pete