Originally Posted by
Dalai
What is your training history? Years, # km's per week etc...
What would be an average training week to this point (focussing on the bike sessions but also good to know other legs training) including distance / time, speed, perceived effort per session.
Also position - were you able to ride the whole bike leg on the aerobars except on the steeper sections? How did you pace? Go out hard and blow up?
From the little information posted I'd say not enough quality km's at race pace... The more details you provide the more precise suggetions we can offer.
Thnx for the comment: here's a couple of notes in response:
Not enough KMs a race pace is a pretty fair overall comment. Essentially, more work to do. I didn't blow up on the bike as much as never got going...... Usually riding in aero position is quite comfortable for 3 hours+ but perhaps the extra hills & winds made it difficult this time. My lower back was very sore during and after the bike. I train on my own, so even with the clock, I'm too inexeperienced to really know when I should be pushing on. 1 st year of serious riding after many, many years off. Many. Averaging only 150km/week which is pretty low. A side point - although my bike has been professionally set up, it has occurred to me that I still have the seat too tall and this is robbing me of power as well as over-extending my calves. My quads & glutes barely felt warmed up after this race.
My other training consists of 7-8 km swimming in one 3.5km session & a couple of 2.5-3km smaller ones. Swimming is my strongest leg due to lots of racing when I was a kid and I'm just focussing on re-capturing my form in the water. The swim leg of this 1/2IM was quite easy to be honest and I should have gone much faster. Next time I will swim from the front and hang with the quick guys instead of conservatively seeding myself back in the pack.
Marginal running at the moment due to a chronic calf injury that I'm working past. Once repaired, I would run 5 x /week between 30 and 60 mins. Again - not enough really and this will be going up over the next two months as I work towards some Olypic /sprint races. I had not run for 6 weeks prior to this race, only doing leg raises/stretches and then a couple of accupuncture sessions two weeks out - which really helped loosen up some very tight & sore muscles.
As you can probably see, I came into this race under-cooked except for the swim and to be honest, I had accepted that I may not even finish. I just wanted to try the distance and then decide if I should push for the longer races or focus on the sprints. Pretty clear that the sprints are where I'll be for sometime while my base fitness builds up.
Apols if this post is garbled .
thnx