Zack's Triathlon Blog

After running the actual course at Wildflower during out training weekend, it occurred to me that while I was already capable of covering the distances necessary, the Wildflower course is really freakin hard! As a result, I felt the need to do more hill training, and apparently I was not the only one. Crammed into the last few weeks of training seems to be lots and lots of hill training. Today we started off with speed drills in the pool. 5 minutes of steady "race-pace" swimming, followed by 5 minutes of sprint-swimming, and repeat. After doing that for almost an hour, we staggered out of the pool and into our bike clothes. Primarily due to the fact that it gave me an extra hour of sleep, I decided to do the 25 mile ride instead of the 40 mile ride today. My justification (clearly an hour of sleep wasn't good enough) was that if I trained at the actual race distance, but did it as fast as I could, that would be better training for the race. In reality there were tons of stop signs and turns for the first, and last 5 miles of the ride. As a result, I rode the middle 15 miles fast (all hills) but had to stick with the group at the beginning and end to avoid getting utterly lost. It was the first group ride where Josh and I were riding the same distance, so we stuck together for most of the ride. My favorite part of the ride was climbing the switchback roads and being able to look down at the roads that I had just climbed. I felt a great sense of accomplishment. Heading back down the hills was a bit scary, and I'm usually pretty comfortable on the descents. There were sharp hairpin turns with loose gravel and potholes in the road. I had to stay very alert and keep my brakes armed and ready.