I raced the the first time trial of the season. It also marked a return of sorts for me to road racing. The last couple of years I have focused on cyclocross and my time trial bike (to be henceforth known as the tt bike) sat there untouched. Initially, I waffled on which bike I would ride for the triathlon, my road with aero bars or the tt bike. The road bike is great, but even with aero bars, I'm not nearly as compact and aero as I am on the tt bike, so I have chosen the tt bike. I have been riding it on all trainer rides, and occasionally on the roads, when the weather has permitted. It has no fenders and it is not really designed to be ridden in the Seattle winter.
I went for a longer ride last weekend on the tt bike, only really looking at zone 2 (conversational pace) to zone 3 (less conversational pace). My legs, butt and back felt great. Its worth mentioning the butt feeling great, because even though my butt is well used to saddle time, tt saddle time is something different. In fact, there is a condition we like to call 'tt butt'. There is this little muscle in your butt called the piriformis. It goes from your sacrum to the top of your thigh bone. And if you have not trained that muscle to be in the aero position, it lets you know. In a not so pleasant way. So to have zero tt butt after a 30 mile ride was awesome. My neck on the other hand was very sore. When I ride on the trainer, I drop my head when my neck gets tired from holding up my melon of a head. And it's fine when you are on the trainer. But when you are on the road, you cannot do this. There are hazards. As in cars and other riders. They don't like it when you are looking down because your neck muscles are tired from holding up your melon of a head. Needless to say, my neck was sore after 30 miles.
This race was 12 miles, so I knew that my neck could withstand that, so I wasn't too worried about it. What I was worried about was zone 4. I have been training my zone 2, low zone 3. Not my zone 4. What's zone 4? 80-90 of your max heart rate. Hard. Not conversational pace. If you can carry on a conversation in zone 4, I will label you a freak of nature. Your zone 4 should be a sustainable effort, just barely. You train up your zone 4. When you first start, you start with 2-3 minutes. As you progress during your training, you ramp up the amount of time you are in zone 4. There was a time, a long long time ago, when I was training for road season, and doing 2-20 minute intervals of zone 4. Zone 5, that is your max, all out, balls to the walls (boobs to the ploobs for the females reading-no, I do not know what a ploob is, I just made it up. I'm tired of all male sports metaphors, so when you hear "she went boobs to the ploobs" on Sports Center one day, you can thank me), 1 minute, 2 minutes max, to be able to sustain.
When you race a time trial, ideally, you are zone 4 for the whole thing. I have, up to this point of my training, spent a total of about 15 minutes training my zone 4. It's not that my coach hasn't told me to do zone 4 work. She has. It's just that......zone 4 is not fun. And so.......I am non-compliant. When I first started training for the tri, she said we're training to get you to be a zone 2 machine, to be able to hold zone 2 forever. And I have used that as an excuse. So, my zone 2 is beautiful right now. My zone 4, ugly duckling of the family.
Needless to say, my zone four let me know how much it missed me. Kind of like when your cat lets you know it has missed you, by throwing up in your shoe. It was not pretty. The photos that I've seen have me looking like I was in pain. Which is appropriate. Because I was. I actually went faster on the second half than on the first half, which is what you're supposed to do. But it's funny that I did that on this course because the 1st half if straight and the second half is twisty turny. How I managed to go faster, I don't know, but I did.
As I was closing in on my last 1000 meters, I kicked it up a bit. And started to have a conversation with my legs. Up to this point, my conversations that I've had with myself, and described here, have always been inside my head. This conversation was different. It could be heard...by others:
me, "Go legs go!"
my legs, silence
me "shut up and pedal harder"
my legs, silence
me, "Damn you, do not quit! Do not do this to me now!
my legs, silence
me, "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrarumph!"
my legs, silence
me, "200m means ZOOOOOOOM! Go go harder harder harder"
my legs, silence
All of that talking resulted in a mediocre finish and a mediocre average of 19.9 mph. A bit off of my pace a couple of years ago when I was training solely for cycling. It's at these times when I must remember that I'm training for 140 miles, of which 112 are the bike, which comes after the 2.5 mile swim and which is followed immediately by a 26.4 run. I wonder what that conversation will sound like.
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