Saturday, April 16, 2011

Adapting

One of the hardest things about being away from home so often and for so long is that you lose your support network a little bit. I still keep in touch with all my really fabulously motivating friends from back home, but it's different when they're not here to kick my ass into gear all the time. So I've had to adapt and really work on motivating myself. Which isn't as easy as it sounds. I also don't have any built in triathlon trainers out here. So I made due, I use the resources that I have available to me. One of those that I'm loving right now is Triathlete Magazine, they have some really great articles and resources for everything I need to work on. Another thing I have to work around is that I don't have my bike here, so it's all about the stationary bike. The nice thing about that is that I can really work on my cadence, which is really tragic, so I've been working on that, using some workouts from "Workouts in a binder: For indoor cycling" by Dirk Friel and Wes Hobson. I'm loving this resource and find the workouts challenging, but still interesting enough that I don't get bored.

Here's today's workout:
• Warm Up: 17 minutes
5:00 - Pedal easy
12:00 - 3x (1:00 right leg, 1:00 both legs, 1:00 left leg, 1:00 both legs) Pedal mostly with one leg for a minute then pedal evenly, then medal mostly with the other leg for a minute
• Main Set: 30 - 60 minutes
30:00 - 60:00 Zone 2 (a fairly light effort during which you are able to speak comfortably) Do this workout while watching tv. Pedal at 95 rpm until commercial breaks; during the breaks, alternate 30 seconds of isolated leg training per leg
• Cool-down: 5 minutes easy at 90 rpm

I did this today and LOVED it. It really helped me focus on my cadence and trying to keep it more consistent. I'm working on building up my tolerance to training in the heat. It's HOT and HUMID over here, which I love, but training in it is a whole different monster. I've been trying to train in the morning and the evening, but eventually I'm going to figure out how to run during the day. Maybe.