Brick by Brick

I left my training session to later today as I had some shopping for sports gear to do :O). The Technical manager(Wallis) and I did a quick bike lube service and put on my new bar ends and put the cadence sensor back on the crank. I'm still waiting on my tri-bars.

Todays session was to be a close to full length event, with 3 weeks to go I'm peaking my long distance training now and will have one more long session on Thursday holiday this week and then I'm moving to swimming and short interval training for bike/run.

It was blustery wind and a little overcast with the odd shower, wind coming directly from the south so would kill me all the way down the N5 then cut across at right angles on my N93 out and back leg. The return on the N5 would be plain sailing with the wind at my back.

70K cycle leg in 2:27:20 which is an average speed of 28.4kmph. It seemed quite long on the outbound leg and I got a second wind about the 45km mark and really got a good pace on. Road conditions as ever vary from bad to really bad, especially when I was on the cycle path.

That 70K time would extrapolate out to a 90K leg of around 3:15. I'm hoping for better roads and less wind. One can always live in hope.

Average cadence was 80, Total climb was 2415ft, which if correct is pretty much in line with Switzerland course. Max cadence was 118 and max speed was 56.9kmph.

I was pretty whacked at the end and my back was stiff and sore and I was a little unstead on my feet for the first minute off the bike. I timed the transition to run at 3:45. This included a 500ml drink and a sports gel. Changing my shoes and top and getting my running head on.

I did the whole session in my new tri suit but with a cycling top(new one sent by Stu and Chico) and a running top for each leg. The tri suit was OK but padding on the bike was less effective than my cycling shorts.

Run leg was 16K in 1:24:27. I was running nice 4:45 and 4:55 km times for the first 4K but my legs just gradually got slower. I managed a second push around the 12k mark and kicked up my average again. Average speed over the whole run was 5:25 per km. Average heart rate 151bpm and max was 165bpm. I think I can go faster if I was pushed. I need more competitive drive.