First tri of the year : Check!
Hello! I hope everyone had a very happy holidays! Today was my first triathlon event of 2016 and all-in-all, it was good. I've never done an indoor event before and it was pretty cool. It was nice not having to be a slave to the elements. The Life Time Fitness Indoor Triathlon Hour is made up of a 10 min swim, a 30 min bike, and a 20 min run with time built in for transitions. Waves of 10 athletes were sent off every 20 minutes. I have always had an extremely positive experience with Life Time operated events and today was no exception. They are a well-oiled machine. Our "wave leader" was positive, helpful, and attentive and for that I am grateful. Today was not my top performance by any stretch but not a disappointment either. If anything it helped me establish my base line for the upcoming season. For instance, I just can't ignore doing brick workouts anymore. As much as a loathe the bike to run workout I just have to do it.
Swimming by far is my weakest of the three disciplines. I've been able to swim
Pre-swim selfie. Minimal nerves and slightly chilly |
The bike was a bit more a challenge for me today. As the cycling portion was only 30 min I found it hard to get in to a rhythm quickly. Generally, I take a long time to get into a groove on the bike, I mean a REALLY long time. By the time we were almost done I had finally hit my stride, so that was a little disappointing. This is one of the reasons why I'm so psyched to try a long-course like Steelhead in August. I think, at least for the bike leg, I'll be much more in my element. Also had a minor issue with my fit. I was sitting way too far down initially and it was not making my knees and legs happy. So I hopped off about 10 min in to adjust my seat. Once I did this I was so much more comfortable and could really get into it. As a silver lining to the bike portion I geeked out to myself a little bit when I walked by the cycling studio right next to where we'd be riding and the instructor was playing one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands, Marianas Trench. I had a giant smile on my face for the first 3 minutes of riding because of this. So thanks unknown cycling instructor for making the initial few minutes very fun for me :). You're the real MVP.
To be quite frank... I have a love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with treadmills. We're not friends, even though they let me do runs in the winter when I'm being too much of a pansy to run outside. The run portion of this event was 20 min at your own pace. So instead of going for distance, like I probably should have been, I impulsively chose to do some interval work. This was a good idea for me simply because for my first 4 minutes of running I couldn't really feel my legs. This is something that will get better over time with the aforementioned brick workouts I mentioned before. My max pace was 7.5 MPH and my jog pace was 5.5. It definitely helped me break up the monotony of just running on a treadmill for 20 min. I would also like to give credit to Sarah Koenig and the Serial podcast for keeping my occupied on the last half of the bike and all of the run.

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