Monday, May 19, 2008

Victoria Day Long Weekend Update

So, we've just finished a nice 3 day weekend and although not overly eventful, I did get some good training in. 

I'll begin this weekend with my thursday night ride, I went out for just under two hours and did laps of stanley park. I did the perimeter of the park, which is the course of the Age Group Triathlon World Champs taking place here the first week of June. This is going to be a hard bike course. I did only two laps, and the second tried to do it all out effort and was only able to hold 37.5 km/h for the 10k loop. Its the hill leading up to the lionsgate bridge that slows you down so much.

Friday was taken pretty easily, I went in for a swim in the morning, did a long pull set and then powered out a long day in lab taking it easy in preparation for Saturday's ride.

Saturday, Kevin, Facundo and I did our typical Horseshoe bay ride followed by a hard ride up Cypress. We wanted this ride to be at our half ironman pace, I was preparing for Shawnigan next weekend, Kevin for Oliver the weekend after that and Facundo for Osoyoos later in the season. This being said, we pushed pretty hard until we reached Cypress. We stopped, regrouped, had a gel or some fluids and then started to ride to the summit. My previous best time on this ascent was 51 minutes a few weeks ago with Kevin, so I really wanted to improve on that. For those of you who don't know. Cypress is a 12.5km climb with an elevation of roughly 800 meters. Well, after two water bottles and a lot of lactic acid later, I managed to get to the top in 44:50, a new PB, so I'm pumped about this. By the end of the season my goal is to break 40 minutes. Facundo followed up with a 46:20 and Kevin about a minute behind that.

Now don't think I'm gloating here, they both whooped me on the ride home, specifically Kevin who decided around km 95 that this workout hadn't been enough for him so picked up the pace into high gear around UBC and Marine Drive.

All in all, the ride was 112km, good ride for the first hot day of the year. 

Sunday I took pretty easy, just a good steady 45 minute run and rest up for the week. I had to go into lab, so I tried to manage my time as best I could and still take advantage of the nice weather. I managed to finish up early and head down to the beach which was my first time dipping my feet in the Ocean for 2008.

Today, was Victoria day, and so we had the day off, my roommate did his first triathlon and surprised everyone with his swim. A self proclaimed sinker two weeks ago pulled off a 14 minute and change 750m, a new personal best in both Time and distance!

I'm not sure how the rest of the race went, he looked strong doing it, but the results and splits aren't up yet.

To watch this race I rode my bike out, nice 50k return trip, and the weather was nice on the way out but then started to rain. This wasn't all negative news though, this was the first time this year that I have been out on a ride in the rain and not been cold. So although it was raining, the only consequence was that I got wet! This is very exciting news for me.

Well, thats all for now, the Giro is still as exciting as ever, they are hitting the big mountains this week, so I can't wait to see how that goes. 

I'm in my taper now, so only a few short rides and runs, and probably a lot more focus on swimming this week. Also, I don't think I will do the Crit tomorrow, forecast says it may rain anyways, so there is a good chance it will be cancelled.





2 comments:

Rob said...

yo, thanks for coming out to the race, it was good times, I am interested to see the times. I was hoping to do below 16 minutes on the swim, so if I am around 14 minutes I will be pumped

Kevin said...

No worries about using my name in the blog entry. I think we can top that 44 minutes and change the next time we do Cypress. I'm planning my 11-week Ironman training for the summer and I'm planning on some crazy mileage (I want to do some 200K+ rides) but there should be plenty of opportunities to ride together. I also think I'm going to do my own Epic-man sometime, probably on July 27th or Aug 3rd. Maybe I can advertise now and try and get some other IMC people to join me?