There's an article in this month's issue of Inside Triathlon regarding a not new, but fairly novel idea of mounting your cleats on the arch of your shoe rather than on the ball of your foot. Sounds crazy right? The author tells of his initial hesitation, but admits he was blown away by the result. He said over the course of a ride, he was able to increase his watts to HR ratio by nine percent. Nine percent! Killer increase. Another benefit is with this set up, the cyclist uses his calf muscles less therefore saving them for the run. Initially, my thoughts are wouldn't this just be more taxing on the quads? For me, the muscle group I feel the weakest in during the run portion of a race or a brick is the quads. This may be in part to my inability to pedal through the rotation of the pedal stroke rather than just pounding the down stroke. In Birmingham, if you don't have any juice left in the quads, you're done. There are too many hills. That being said... 9% is hard to argue with.
So on to training: This weekend, Lauren and I went down to Perdido Key, FL to spend the weekend with her folks. Of course, I brought along my trusty Cervelo and running shoes. Between Perdido, Orange Beach, and Gulf Shores there's a nice smooth bike lane that stretches 17 miles along the shore. Even though you're almost guaranteed to face a wind from some direction, the ride is incredible. Saturday I hit the road for a hard 32 miles. I worked on what Coach calls intervals, but I've renamed "pulsing." Push it hard, then recover, repeat. I've found that over the course of the ride I'm able to keep a higher speed. It's a tool that I was supposed to use in my last tri but failed miserably. So for now, I continue to work on it.
Today, oh my goodness. I did 20 hard miles along the same course, then followed that up with an 8 mile run. The run was a battle the entire way. "Matt, just do 4." "Matt, why don't you walk a little." Mentally it was a dog fight, and I was exhausted. But I finished it in 61 minutes. So big deposit into the bank on that one.
Hope all is well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Wow - nice ride. I've got to learn some of those techniques, my road bike technique needs a lot of improvement.
Thanks for stopping by.
Big deposit! 61 minutes for 8 miles in a brick- great. Recover as you go is the way our coach says it.
Did you get any fishing done down in the keys? You are so lucky to be able to drive there! And good on ya for bring the bike and getting some milage in while you were there- what a way to see the islands :)
Post a Comment