It’s week three and the crotch swamp and resulting chafing has set in hard, even though the temperature has steadily been dropping from 108 – 112 the first week we were here to a more comfortable 100 – 106 this past week. The problem is that all of my shorts have a liner, and if I go outside for more than about two minutes, the liner is bound to become saturated, requiring a change of shorts if I have an extra pair lying around. And I only have so many shorts to go through in three days—about the timeframe I have to do a load of laundry—so other than doing laundry every two days, which would be insanity, my solution either lies with talcum powder or vaseline. Possibly both at the same time.
This will most likely be the last week I do this weekly training update, by the way. I may try to keep the blog alive with training and racing stories, and rants, like in the old days. Or I may give it up again. But I already keep a personal training journal, so this feels redundant. And if I have the time to write two training journals, I should probably just start on another next manuscript instead. Or get a real job.
I’ve been reading through some of my old blogs from years past and it feels like an entirely other person wrote them. The excitement, sarcasm, self-deprecation, and fake arrogance (and real arrogance) that made those posts so good, or horrible, seem to belong to someone else. Maybe I’m just out of practice. Maybe I just need something else to write about and the ability will come back.
I think this blog died a slow death right after I started triathlon. Triathlon, as a sport, just hasn’t been the same type of muse that bike racing was for me. The racing is not nearly as exciting for one thing. But the lifestyle—the lack of teammate shenanigans, the reduced travel schedule, the stability that doing three sports instead of one requires—I think is the main issue. To be a good triathlete (and I’m not saying I’m good, by the way), requires a fairly boring day to day. Consistency. Rest. Dealing with injuries. For whatever reason, bike racing invited chaos, not just in races but in life as well. And chaos makes for good writing. Or maybe I was just young.
Another manuscript may be calling my name. And hopefully more law firm website pages because unpublished manuscripts don’t pay the bills.
Monday
6.3 mile run. My shins and calves were still incredibly achy and I had to stop at mile 3 to walk. Should have turned around there and taken the shortest way home, but I was being stubborn and continued on. Ended up walking/jogging home. Need to just take the rest of the week very easy on runs.
1 hr easy spin on the road bike.
20 min strength. Main lift was Bulgarians. Skipped deadlift. Probably need to back off the strength a tad to let my legs recover.
Tuesday
3.75 hr Tuesday Morning Fairwheel Ride. AV 214 NP 260. Stronger group today so I sat in for the first third of it, fearful of the McCain climb (it’s like 2.5 minutes, so super long and hard). Managed to make the front group of three again. Normalized power for the hardest 30 minutes was 370.
Wednesday
4 mile run at 7:59 pace. Shins felt a little achy in the last mile, but not horrible. I was able to run the whole thing at least.
50 min endurance 3K swim. Did this swim at UofA. A bit too warm, but manageable. Decided I should start kicking while swimming. Aside from really focusing on the swim and putting in +20K a week of structured workouts and masters, I think that adding the kick (I currently do not kick at all) is the only way to get faster. This week, as you’ll see, I’m essentially only riding because my lower legs are fucked and the masters group that I just joined is off for the week because the pool is being cleaned.
2.5 hr ride with the El Groupo team as a volunteer coach. Rode with three teenagers who are stoked about bike racing. It brought back memories. Not of being a teenager because that was too long ago to remember, but of being stoked about bike racing.
Thursday
1.25 hr easy spin. AV 160. This is how champions are made. Or so I hear.
Friday
2.5 hr ride 6×4 min Vo2. Average interval power was 394, up 8 watts from last week’s average (386). Granted, it was cooler today than last week, but things are looking up! Just 50 more watts to go and I’ll be back to where I was 10 years ago (at altitude).
5 mile easy run. 7:41 pace. Lower legs held up, but just barely.
Saturday
3.5 hour Shootout ride. Same size group as the Tuesday ride with a lot of the same guys. A few new people as well, though technically I’m the new guy. Made the selection over the bridge but got beaten on Sprint hill by an El Groupo rider, Elliot, who was less than half my age. It was a fun, hard 40 minutes spent at a normalized power of 372 for the race portion, and two hours at NP 321. No way I’d ride this hard by myself. I’m very fortunate these two group rides exist, though I really should start riding the TT bike at some point. . .
3.3 mile run off at 7:24 pace. Lower legs were aching so I had to take it easy.
Sunday
6 mile hike starting from Gordon Hirabayashi trailhead on Mt. Lemmon with Adelaide and Maybellene.
35 min strength. Normal lower body routine of:
- About 5 minutes of band exercises to tire out the glutes so they don’t interfere with the rest of the workout
- Bulgarian split squats 3×8 each leg at 125 lbs (for my fucked up knees)
- One round of 25 x Mobo board band dips and 25 x Toe Pro calf raises in between the BSS sets (for my fucked up plantar)
- Deadlift 5×3 at 275 lbs (for my fucked up testosterone)
- 10 bent over Ts (12 lb dumbbells) in between each deadlift set (for my fucked up back)
KENNETT PETERSON 