Goodbye to a good friend

It is with great sadness that I have to let go of my dear gym bag. We’ve had lots of adventures together here and abroad. It’s one of the few items that I have not left behind after bricks, or swim or other workouts and it has certainly made my daily routines way more bearable.


Last year it went for major renovations on the zipper area, but this time around I don’t think there’s hope of survival.

close up of the damage

I will now start the search for its replacement, donations are welcome as long as they are in a usable state. I am happy to advertise your company. Medium and large sizes are welcome. Transition bags will merit your name mentioned in this blog.

Stay tuned for my first aquathlon race report.

first impressions

I took the new bike out for a spin yesterday morning. I hadn’t ridden for some time and I managed to do a decent couple of hours.

The TCR Advanced is the lower of the racing bikes line of Giant. As the name states, Giant is no picnic, they have a large range and there’s constant updates, colour layout and so on. I’ve always been a bit apprehensive of big brands, for no particular reason. That said, I had a trek 1000 as my first road bike, and I had an old Giant from the first carbon eras and they were both great bikes.

Back to my ride, I was undecided between the bike I got and a TCR Alliance, which is a funny combination of carbon and alloy, the price was pretty much the same, but there was the 105 vs. Ultegra issue and the full carbon vs. alloy carbon issue. I ended up with a 105 setup, I don't know if luckily or not, but this bike didn't come with compact cranks.

Tuesday morning was the date and I took the bike for its first ride, easy spin for 10 minutes and then rolling hills for most of the next hour and a half. It ended up with a 8km TT section with headwind and back spinning home via the upland hills. The first thing to note is that 105 has come a long way, but it is sill a long way from Ultegra in terms of shifting performance and overall smoothness. I don’t love it, but it will grow on me. The second thing is that this bike is a pretty solid performer on the climbs and can hold some efforts. I reckon is a good combination of the oversized bottom bracket and the Aksium race wheels. They are not the lightest wheel, but they do the job and don’t need a lot of maintenance.

Steering up and down the hills is great and there were no wobbles in the speedy sections, only a slight drop in the top speed, but I'll probably sort that out. The head set is pretty normal, not too big, not too small. It's quite massive as well, but that's what you usually get in Giant.

On the TT section I went on to the drops and felt no loss of power, so the guy that sold and fitted it to me did a great job, Thanks Steve.

It’s a great improvement for me to finally have the right size of bike, with pretty much the right specs and a geometry that favours the type of riding I do. I look forward to more k’s on it and confirming if these impressions are right.

Another first time was for our new swimming squad. We’re now in an outdoor non heated pool and we have the whole pool for ourselves with no fast 11 year olds making us feel old and slow. The session is also a bit longer (1.5hr) but being on a wetsuit kind of makes it sweet. On the downside, I'm now driving 15min to get there opposite to 4mins from the other pool... that means less sleep.

some more on that to come tomorrow.

Negative splits... and a new weapon

 Negative splits are usually hard to achieve for some. and I am one of them. Been able to do the second half of a swim, a bike or a run leg or race faster than the first half is something I am not quite bright at. And it is not for lack of trying. When doing workouts at a given HR band, going for a negative split usually means that I jump over the limits and I've been told off several times to do it again.
Swimming
The typical negative split workout is on a 400m or a 1500m TT. I am good at starting and can do a decent first half, but I naturally tend to have a low period between 1/2 and 3/4 of the swim that affects my chances of negative splitting. I've tried to start slower and speed up, but the slow part is again to slow and I negative split with an overall slower time, so not great.
On the bike
Same as above, however I dont have low periods, I consistently keep good average, but lack the strength/endurance at the end to push a bigger gear.
On the run
I have a bit more of control in this front, but only on shorter workouts. I can negative split on a 5km or on a single km, but comes a 10km or a half marathon and I am fried.

There must be some kind of talent that I don't have. And talent cannot be learned, so I must adapt. Probably one year of neg. split training could bring the success I'm after. What I have observed is that IM athletes are more prone to negative split their races and workouts. But I haven't seem many IM guys doing 3min k's on the track. I'd say is probably more important for them that it's for a standard tri kind of guy. I'm just only digressing here, please take no offence you all in the IM world.

Anyway, I had it on my head for the last few days and more thoughts came my way but they've vanished. However an interesting development has shaken my beliefs:

A good friend who can beat me on any distance but sprint triathlons made me a very generous offer that I had no option but to take. He's a bit of a grown up boy with toys, and he lend me his lil' speed machine for my race in Budapest. To say the bike is in perfect nic is very shy. It has all the features that you expect of someone that cares about his gear. Tape in al the contact points, greased bolts on the right places. Shiny blue and black carbon everywhere and a setup that fits me very well.

So, after some basic fitting I took my friend's baby for a ride for today's 25km TT workout. I received all good comments from mates and coach so it could be said I was a proud triathlete in a miserable Sunday morning. The TT went OK for the conditions, but still 1min off my best time. The real bomb was that I negative splitted the whole thing!. The circuit is 2 big and 2 small laps. I did the second big lap (9km) 20secs faster than the first one and the second small lap 15secs faster than the first one. Without any previous plan or concious effort. I blame it on my improved ridinig position and the lack of numbnuts issues. I was happy OK after I checked my splits and I wonder how much better it could be if I had the bike for longer time. All in all a happy Sunday,

Thanks to my mate the frenchman and his generosity

Date: 22 Aug
Sport: Cycling/Running
Time: 150min (42.20)/12.30min
Dist: 75km(25.3km)/3km
Comment: another rainy TT, bring on the sun!

Gear Review - MacPac Tempo rainjacket

The jacket is from the “world famous in New Zealand” MACPAC brand. For the ones who don’t know, MACPAC is a pretty popular manufacturer of middle/top of the range tramping and mountaineering gear. Their range has widened in the last couple of years after they changed owners. I didn’t know they did some gear for multisport, they should advertise it because not a lot of my mates knew it either.

Yesterday’s night training was a good night to test it: just as we started, it started to rain and the wind picked up and chilled the dark docklands car park where the magic happens.

The tempo is a mid range rain jacket and it’s rainproof qualities are good. I went out in moderate rain for 30 minutes of and the jacket kept me dry allright. I could see the droplets being kept outside the shell, wich is quite a change from my previous rain/wind vest.  It takes only 10 minutes of rain to get the water through the fabric on my vest. Wind protection was awesome, there was some 10 minutes of hard wind and it felt like nothing (face and legs were cold, though). I think this is the kind of gear that I’ll grow to have with me at all times.

The sizing is reasonably big, which is what I usually expect from the brand. I like jackets to be tight, yet roomy and this size S one is just that. The length of the arms is perfect and there’s lasercut holes under the armpits that provide some ventilation during exercise. The back is a tiny bit longer than the front of the jacket, something that helps if you’re planning to use it for a bike ride.

The main issue with rainproof and waterproof gear is that it the waterproofing comes at the expense of breathability. The more resistance to the elements, the most moist that will keep looping around in between the garments and the body and the surrounding environment. The Tempo is no different, but given yesterday’s conditions I was pleased to check that my base layer and running top were almost dry.

At $109 NZ, this is not a cheapo, but the Teflon frabric is supposed to be pricy. Macpac has also a very good customer service reputation and do their own repairs. Macpac has also a reputation for durability, something that I can’t say for a lot of my triathlon garments. So I think is good value for money.

I still wonder why they don't start marketing themselves to the multisportes a bit more.

As far as my sporting life goes, today I had a visit to the physio (3 more to go and I’ll be even better than before the injury) and the usual bike run session.

Date: 27 July
Sport: Cycling/Running
Time: 70min/15min
Dist: n/a / 3km
Comment: it doesn’t feel like a hard week, let’s hope it stays like that.

Gear Talk #2

Today is the turn of the bikes. The second leg of triathlon is the bike leg, and over the last 20 odd years bikes have evolved in many aspects to arrive to what we know today as the tri specific bike, or flying machine. There isn’t a perfect tri bike, although my heart is with the Canadian born Cervelos. The theory suggests that the tri bike geometry and setting allows for a good aerodynamic position, which will economize effort that we later will use for running. What we’re looking at is, distance between seat and handlebars, seat post angle, and head set length. They all need to be supportive of our back and core so we don’t cramp up any muscles. About 75% of any triathlon field will be sporting these nice ox’s for their second legs.

My first triathlon I did on a borrowed road bike, the second, third and fourth one I did on my own aluminium road bike, which was also known as treka. Later on, I bought a full carbon bike and that lasted for a year until the frame cracked on a fall. We went together for many miles of training, and a couple of half iroman among other things and overall I many good memories of them both.

The replacement frame is my current bike, an Avanti Quantum 2, nice and stiff full carbon road bike. It is a great bike to do club racing and general road riding, but as soon as I want to go onto a more aerodynamic position trouble starts, because the geometry allows only for a small change. I went to Worlds last year on it, and it was a bit of a problem, but not much different than having a niggle during your run.

The “downside” of the tri bikes is that they can some times be very very pricy. I am still working my head around on how to get hold of a tri bike that will help me to save 3 minutes on the 40km bike leg in Budapest, it’s about 3000 New Zealand Dollars, that one grand a minute, funny, aye?

So far the above reasoning has kept me honest to the reason I race for, and what is important and what is not when deciding how to allocate my pennies. Don’t get me wrong, I love riding, and I’d lover to have a tri bike, but at this point all I can do is to talk about it, ha ha ha.

 

Today it was back to a tuesday indoor training session close to home, we usually do a lil' run off the bike, more to come on that soon.

 

Date: 11 May

Sport: Bike /// Run

Time: 60min /// 14min

Dist: n/a /// 3km and a bit

Comment: I forgot how much I could sweat, awful sight : )

Gear Talk #2

As I was running yesterday I looked at my right foot and realized that the shoes I was running with are starting to give in. It's a small thing and I don't realize until a funny landing sound comes when I do uphills. It's got to do with the type of material of the outer soles as well, but generally Adidas and Nike will do that on me.
With time one becomes sort of an expert in shoes and their different specs. I like Adidas for durability and value for money and I've never used Ascics. Nikes are OK but they wear out too quickly and NB are too wide for my foot most times. Of the shoes currently on my rack, the oldest pair has over 1000km run on them, the second one about 600 and the third one is on the mid 400's. I know, it's about bloody time I get some new ones, but I've been busy. Besides, with this blog and my written log book, I've left behind the electronic log book so the KM counts on shoes has been done by guesstimate.

One of the bad things of reading too much about the sport is that the amount of information sometimes conflicts and some other times it gets annoyingly tecchie and what is worst, scares you off going out and having a good time. I read somewhere that shoes should be changed at 600km, and to be fair, they may well have to. But the shoes I loved and would use for most my runs have been discontinued and the newer model is not quite the same fit, so i've been busy looking for the second most perfect shoe for the last 3 months and I've overworn the others. Shall I stop going for a run until I have some backup ones? Am I an injury waiting to happen?

Dunno, I'm probably too tired today to answer, but I thought it was a good topic to put out there.

Today was a single workout day,
Date: 6 May
Sport: Cycling
Time: 45min
Dist: N/A
Comment: the very last day as a lab rat, here's the data