Perspective

I've been analyzing and over analyzing my training like never before lately.... I guess because I put a pretty specific goal out there, which I've never done before. It's a challenge, and it's SO incredibly hard to put training times, paces, HRs into perspective with = race pace.

My bike rides have been pretty incredible lately... avgs are higher than my entire history of cycling (ha - that makes it sound like I've been riding forever!). But, in the end how do you make an 18.3mph training ride = 20.5+ race day?

I keep going back to the fact that the first time I did Soma I trained at about a 16mph pace and pulled off a 19mph race pace - 3 years ago.... I have come a lot further on the bike in that time.

And, running too - although my miles are very very minimal (had my peak running mileage this week of 19.5miles) they are getting faster. I actually negative split my long run this week by over :30 (sub 9min pace) for the last half of the run. But, since I have never had a great run split in a race, it's really hard for me to come up with a run time in the race.....

I know a lot of this is lack of confidence, which I'm trying for. I guess in 5 weeks I will no a lot more.....

So, yesterday I had a 3:30 ride on tap, with a :30min transition run after. All my training buddies were MIA so it was going to be a big mental day for me. My legs were TRASHED. With those 240 lunges, 8x400s, a couple bike rides and my longest run since CDA the day before I was a little worried. I've also been having some issues with muscle cramping for a couple weeks. I think I got behind on my hydration and salt intake, and I was paying the price. I actually had a calf cramp wake me up one night, and it was sore the next day. This is usually not something I ever have?

So, anyway... I had picked a route that would have me climbing for the entire first half..... Then I had a nice 10ish mile descent - and ending pretty flat.

My legs were worthless right from the start, so I started coming up with things to occupy my time. Thank You Garmin! I added the lap view to my screen so I basically played with that and did math in my head all morning. I started with the warmup... a nice flat start, then about 8 miles of climbing.

13.86miles, 1120ft ascend, 720 descend, 16.8mph - avg HR 124 (yah.. I was having a hard time getting going...)

The next portion was pretty much all up - straight up Pima road
9.63miles, 870ft ascend, 100ft descend, 14.9mph - avg HR 152 (I was GLUED to my Garmin. My legs were KILLING me and I kept fading. If I fell below 150HR I made myself stand up to pick up the pace for a minute

The 3rd segment was my favorite, thru the town of Cave Creek. Nice, FAST descents. I was at an overall avg for the ride of 16mph for 90mins so I knew I need to pick up the pace to hit my goal of 18.2avg....

I decided to see what I could do in the second half so I decided to push thru the pain and really pedal (geared out most of the way) on the descends & flats. I did it - over the next 90mins I avg'd 20.6mph, 145hr, 1000ft ascend & 2000ft descend....

The unfortunate part of the ride is I think I hit EVERY single light - so a LOT of stop and go..... my garmin graph looks a mess with all the up down up down.. All in all it was a good day. On completely trashed legs I was able to hold an 18.3avg on my own. I had some rough patches, but overall I'm happy with the results:

60.1miles, 18.3avg, 3:17mins - HR avg 142, max 168, ~3300ft ascend and descend. I think the low HR was due to all the stopping and going, and the rough start....
Transition run 2.6miles, 9:24pace (I actually ran with ice down my top - it was 95degs out by the time I was running.....)

But my big question - how does all that translate into race day?

**Update - as requested, the graph. You can see all the drastic ups and downs are the damn lights!!!