It's about the bike - Part II

Had a really great bike today. Being a big girl biking is tough for me. I've got power but it's tough to haul all this up a hill. Still I'm getting leaner and really pushing myself on the bike. My training plan called for a high cadence ride today. I kept it up to about 120 pedal strokes a minute. The route was pretty flat - not too many hills and I was pleased with the 18.9 mph average. I'm liking the bike more. But I've got a 2.5 and 3 hour bike ride planned in a couple of weeks so we see how much I like my bike then. I want to get up to regular 4-5 hour bike rides but I'm having trouble finding routes I like. I don't like a lot of traffic. We'll see what I can find.

Travel Training

I work at a global company so I travel. Not extensively but when I do travel it's usually a week or two at a time. Which always puts me in a dilemma - how do I do triathlon training - specifically biking - when you're traveling to a developing country. There isn't exactly a 24-hour fitness in Burkina Faso. I'm going to South America on Saturday and all I can obsess about is how I'm going to get my training in. Good news though - the hotel I'm staying in is a luxury one and is along the beach so I can run there. Woo Hoo.

Anyway, I had an incredible bike ride this morning. Really pushed my cadence and it showed in my mph - about 18.9 average. I usually average about 14 mph so this was great. I've calculated and I have to average at least 18 mph over the 112 miles for me to finish my bike ride in the Ironman in six hours. That will give me plenty of time to run the marathon.

I know more than 50 weeks out this is all conjecture but I'm obsessing now so that I know what I'll have to work up to to get through and finish this damn thing on time.

It's about the bike

Boy I'm truly tired today. Did about 31 miles on the Air Force Academy campus. The Air Force Academy sits on 18,000 acres of some of the most pristine, beautiful and wonderful land in Colorado. And the best thing about it is I get to use it like it's my back yard. I try to ride there at least once a week - by trail or by road. Anyway, the Academy sits basically on a mountain so anywhwere you're riding there you're pretty much climbing. I had a 2.5 hour ride to do so I decided to do it there. I'm still granny-gearing it up the most uphill slopes. I'd like to at least 2nd gear it up those long, winding hills. I just didn't have the stuff today. Me and this chick played leap frog and I had her for a while but then I couldn't sustain it and poof, she was gone. She had a really high cadence. I've often wondered - if high gear high cadance is the ideal is it better to be able to go high gear low cadence or low gear high cadence? I need to speed up my cadence. This will of course help me go faster.
The bike is the portion I worry about most for the IM. I need to get through the bike in about 6 hours so I can walk the run if I have to ... not that I'm planning on it, 26.2 miles is a LONGGGGG way to walk.

So I need my butt in the saddle like white on rice so that I can get better at rotating those legs and hips. Oh well. At least I try!