Green = Spring = Tri Season Coming = Happiness

Green is my favorite color. I feel better today, so I will write in green.

I grumbled about the race for days, and the hub. was nearly ready to rip out my vocal chords so I would just shut up. Luckily, on Tuesday afternoon I had a new focus: the RAMP test on the bike. We just got our Computrainer up and working, so it was time to measure my power at threshold and my power to weight ratio.

The hub. conducted the test.

The testing atmosphere wasn't the greatest: my dog kept farting, my kids were fighting and kept getting close to the rear wheel of the bike causing me to scream in rage and panic, and the hub., God love him, wasn't very encouraging and warm about the whole thing (could've been the farting dogs and wild kids-). Finally he let the dogs out and settled the kids in front of Angelina Ballerina. I watched Angelina too as I warmed up and he fiddled with the computer. Re-cap: Angelina's buddy Thom, a ballet dancer, was getting bullied by the jock mice who like football (soccer). In the end, Thom proves that he is MAN by teaching them all to dance.

Bah! Get real.

I digress.

We got it all calibrated and decided failure would be the point at which my cadence fell below 80 rpm. We started with a power of 80 watts and moved it up 10 watts every minute. I was hoping to go to like 300.

That turned out to be a little out of reach...

I lasted 13 minutes. Andy put lots of comments in the chart he made like, "sweating like a hog", and "turning red and panting." Nice. For those of you not computing in your head, that means I failed at about 210 watts. That makes my threshold something like 165. Hello, sucky! Andy did point out that my weight to power ratio isn't actually very bad...

In short, I am short, little and don't have a whole lot of power in these here legs.
At least I don't have to carry a lot up hills.

I looked up my power/weight correlation in this book I have on using power as a measuring tool on the bike. On a scale of non-athlete (sucks ass) to Pro athlete, I was GOOD. Not shitty, not awesome, not even very good, but GOOD. Basically my biking power is very middle. I don't like middle. I like very good, or awesome, or holy shit, I can't believe it!

So I got even more pissy and angry and swore even more for a whole night (if that's humanly possible--I realize I swear like a sailor. I can't help it; swearing is just so much more colorful than benign talk. I digress again.) The hub. had to give me the "You love triathlon--don't ruin it with an obsession with being the best" lecture I need to hear every few days or so.
I agreed. I whimpered a bit, ate some chocolate and then I did my best to let it go. (Alas, the quart of Haagen Dazs wasn't available. )

This morning I got up and swam before work. I had to do the "BIG SET". Kim (aka Locked and Loaded) has described this in her blog before. You do an 800 warm up with some pulling and kicking and stuff. Then you do a 400 time trial, rest 2 minutes, do 2 x200 time trials, then rest two minutes, then do 5 x 100--first steady, second with one 25 hard, third with 50 hard, fourth 75 hard, and the last at full speed ahead on all 4 lengths. Then you add the times of the 400 the 2 x 200 and the final 100 together to get a score.

I kicked some ass! The only part that sucked is that I hit my heels on the wall on one flip turn. I hate that. It really hurt. The only thing worse is missing the wall. I did that once too.
Anyway--
I did the 400 on 5:45
2 x 200 on 2:46 and 2:45
and the final 100 on 1:18.
My score is 12:34.

That's better than I was last month. FINALLY, I am better at something than I was last month. I needed that.

All day I felt more chipper and not like such a lame ass, and after work I had a peaceful, easy run without my Garmin in the 55 degree weather we had today. Awesome! I wore shorts and a t-shirt outside for the first time this year.
Hello tri-season, here I come!