this morning had a relatively long swim with maija, matt and claudia. i love maija's workouts probably b/c she does them too and makes them sound fun. swimming bear matt beat me significantly during the bull buoy 25's (but not for long, buddy!! just kidding, i am horrible at trash talking). i noticed that i save a lot of time on my 200 im's w/ my personal style of backstroke in which i keep my head raised a bit, like an otter. i had done this in columbia to make sure i was going more or less straight, and that people weren't going to bump into me b/c i am so freaking slow on the back. the frustrating thing was that i am beginning to feel the stress of sunday's race and i feel silly for feeling stressed about it, and then kind of
stressing out about trying to not stress out. i noticed b/c i was having trouble breathing and then feeling really hot and not rotating much and it felt like there was this cloud in my head. i am the master of psyching myself out- i remember playing piano for a competition a while ago, and my hands and legs were shaking so hard and my nose was running..not a pretty picture. lesson learned from today: DO NOT look at or think about how other people are doing. it's not good for psyching yourself out and not good for your positioning anyway. i talked to maija a bit twds the end and she said "relax" which is pretty obvious..but i felt better after that. i would really like to have confidence in myself more of the time rather than less b/c it makes things more fun. i think my favourite race was the NY marathon in 2006 (?) b/c i had no expectations other than an idea of "it would be nice to finish under this time." i had fun running, and had written my name on my stomach and back so that when i got tired, i'd veer to the side a bit and people would cheer. even ended up beating my original expectations by 8 minutes and my first marathon time a few months ago by 51 minutes. it would be nice to have that freedom most of the time.towards the end of the swim, todd joined us and maija suggested that we do most of the workout over again. i was so relieved when todd had to go after our first 500. then went for a quick bike and finished before the rain.
ok questions on the bike:
- is it ok to bike in the rain?
- if you are aiming for 90-100 rpm, is that for uphill, downhill, straight? and the only thing that changes is your resistance? (sorry i don't know the technical jargon)
anyway i hope to get all the pre-race jitters out of my system so that by race day i'll be like, "oh man, this is fun!"
3 comments:
If you like Icy Hot get some of this...Jivamutki China Gel (I think there are a couple Jivamutki Yoga Studios in NYC). My sister first gave me some a few years ago and on this trip I bought a huge jar of it!
http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/boutique/index.html
Answers to your questions:
Biking in the rain-if you are trainig for a race, you should, if not, take a nap instead. It's good to know how your bike handles when roads/brakes etc are wet.
Cadence-having an average cadence for the ride of 90-100 is good, it's good to keep the cadence as close to 90-100 the entire ride. Even going up hill, put it in an easy gear and spin. You won't be able to maintain that always, but it saves the legs. Unless of course you are working on gaining power/strength, then some 60-70-80 is okay (think intervals like 10x 2-3 min of hard slow pedalling with 1-2 min recovery)
As Maggs said, biking in the rain is okay. You just want to be a bit more carful with taking turns and decending and about cars as they often have a harder time seeing you. Make sure you wear bright colors (always a good idea anyway) and possibly a blinking light if it is really dark from the clouds.
With the cadence since you are used to being at lower cadences like 60 or so it will take some time to get used to being at 90-100 and being comfortable. Going up some hills it may be hard to maintain a high cadence, but do the best you can.
Good job at swimming this morning. I didn't mean for you to do the whole workout over again silly, I meant for Todd to do it from the start and for you to do as much as you wanted.
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