HILLS HILLS and more HILLS

In my last blog I talked about scouting out the courses for IM WA 70.3.  I mentioned that it was a hilly bike course and that my training focus for the next couple months needed to be on hills......
WELL - you get what you asked for.... my coach - Matt - took that to heart and every bike ride since then has had some type of hill workout in it.  :)  YAY!  I am already feeling stronger with the past couple weeks of hill workouts.  Somebody asked me what it means to do "hill workouts".  Here ya go...

Hill repeats - These can be short or long. I have done both types in the past couple weeks. The short hill repeats were about 1.5 miles uphill and repeated 3 times and were incorporated into a long bike ride day (about 50 miles).  The long hill repeats were about 4.2 miles uphill. I did this last week - repeated 5 times.  It was about a 42 mile bike ride day.  And you might think the 4.2 miles going down is "easy"... it's not! By my 5th repeat that day - I was definitely feeling the hill work in my legs.  I have that same workout again this week but it's only 4 repeats - should be easier right?  Doubt it - challenge is to make every uphill repeat be the same time - I'm looking forward to that challenge - 4th needs to be as fast as the 1st. I LOVE challenges built into my workouts - makes them fun and gives me something to think about/concentrate on/figure out how to accomplish as I am riding.

Long climbs - These are incorporated into the overall miles for a bike day and may be done multiple times during the ride. I will be doing a 10 mile climb this week as part of my long bike day (about 50 miles total).  I am looking forward to this day - the long climb is up to Hyalite and I have not been up there on my bike yet this year.

Another important part of my training is nutrition.  I have been focusing a lot on my nutrition and hydration during my bike rides.  I need to consume about 200 calories per hour in food and drink. I have come up with this number after a lot of trial and error.  This amount gets me through the bike rides, and then allows me to start the run without feeling depleted. During the run, I continue to drink some sort of electrolyte drink and if I think I need something more substantial I will eat some gummi bears or a "Waffle Stinger".

Here is a photo and a couple videos from my bike ride last week:

Long Hilly Ride Complete

 

 

Before

 

 

After
 

4th of July Weekend Activities

Pat and I went to the Tri Cities, WA (Richland, Kennewick, Pasco) over the 4th of July weekend to scout out the IM Washington 70.3 course. The race is 9/22 and I wanted to get a feel for the bike course.

We stopped in Spokane for the night on 7/4 to watch the fireworks on the river.  They put on a great show and we were able to sit right under the fireworks as they were fired over the river. It was an impressive display and we were so glad we stopped the night there to watch them.

The high  temps in the Tri Cities over the weekend were in the low 100s.  It was hot!  But, I got to ride the bike course on Saturday.  56 miles of hills (not quite but it felt like it).  I am so glad I did this.  The course was much hillier than I expected - I told Pat I felt like I was going up for most of the 4 hour ride with very little downhill/flat to balance it out.  It was good to know this now - I would have been very surprised on race weekend to find so many hills to climb.  So it resets my training a bit - we will put more focus on hills during my rides for the next couple months! YAY!  I actually don't mind hills - but I do need to prepare for them properly so I am excited for this challenge! 😀

I'm the worst selfie taker :)

Long uphill grade - hot road for miles and miles

I also checked out the run course.  It is a paved path that runs parallel to the river.  Out and back course.  It will be a nice course to run - hopefully it's not too hot on race weekend.

And - the swim.... I wasn't going to write about this because I am actually embarrassed for myself but here goes...

I chickened out of doing a practice swim in the river.  Why? Here's what I told myself at the time:

1. I don't know where to swim (boats and jet skis in the river)
2. I don't know the river, is it safe to swim in it (I didn't see other swimmers - just people playing in the water near the shore).
3. I'm scared

Ok - so there are my reasons.  Yeah -they are dumb and that's why I am embarrassed for myself. 

1. So what if there are boats and jet skis in the water.  I'm not swimming in the middle of the river - I'm swimming parallel and close to shore.
2. So what if I don't know the river - of course it's safe to swim in - I could have easily found a place to at least jump in and do a few strokes.
3. So what if I'm scared! It's ok to do scary things.

So there you have it - I can't go back and change the weekend swim / lack of swim but I can move forward.  I will do plenty of OWS (open water swims) over the next couple months and my confidence for OWS will come back.  I know come race weekend I will be fine and I won't even be worried about the swim.  It will be fine!
 

Lastly, we also got to have dinner with Pat's sister Coleen. She lives just 50 miles from the Tri Cities and she met us for dinner Saturday night. It was nice catching up with her and all her family activities.

 

 

Around 50 miles