My legs are a bit wobbly this morning. I realize that just knowing how to ride a bike isn’t enough for me if I want to reach my goal of eventually moving out of the bottom third of female finishers. I actually have to pedal it at a good speed. Unfortunately, people who design race routes don’t just plan the bike portion to be at a nice slight downhill with the wind at my back (I’m thinking of portion of Great Westen Trail from Cumming Tap back to Des Moines. It is heaven). It seems like sometimes they invoke Hunger Games like course development strategies (yes, I’m still getting over last weekend!)
I was looking up the results for the 2011 Copper Creek Tri yesterday and realize that if I don’t want to enjoy watching everyone fly by me on their bikes after the swim again, I need to put in some miles. Hard-for-me miles. Our goal last night was to do 13 miles averaging 15 mph. I think I kept driving my husband nuts since I bought him a wireless computer for his bike last month. “How fast is this? How far is this? How fast is it now? How ’bout now?” It really does help to have a gauge and when we finally pushed over 20 mph (yes, on a downhill) it was good.
Also, I realized that I need to mentally reconcile the difference between biking for fun and biking for fitness. Swimming is fitness for me. It isn’t fun unless I’m competing. Running is fitness. Period. Biking is weird because it can be either. When I ride my bike with the end goal of tacos and gin, it is super fun! I feel like when I ride to train, it is significantly less fun. It is similar to hanging out at a bar with an awesome drink menu knowing you have to get up early to work the next day (because you work on weekends) so you’re being the responsible DD for a group of people having way more fun than you. I know that the capacity of fun is right there, but I’m sacrificing some of the enjoyment to do the responsible thing.
Even though I was kind of grumpy last night during training, today as I type with wobbly legs, I feel really glad I pushed myself hard on the bike. Kind of like waking up the morning after being the DD and realizing how glad you are that you don’t have a hangover.
How’s your training going?
EVDaySpa
mattyj515
Come Tri with Me! 
I bet a lot of people run into the fitness/fun conflict when it comes to swimming. In college I used to go swimming with friends a lot – for most of us, that meant paddling a few lazy laps, then floating around on water noodles and discussing Sir Walter Scott novels. So I was kind of confused when I arranged a swim date with one of my more athletic friends. When we got to the pool, she dove straight into the deep end and swam, like, eight laps while I was trying to find the right water noodles. I guess finding training buddies with similar expectations is important!
Thank you for being my first comment! Also, I LOVE noodles, best pool invention ever.