Cycling - Jake Porter

Training Day #53

Last Brick before the Race!!

Today I’ll be practicing my second transition for my upcoming race. This will be the second and last brick session that I will be doing before the race. I used all the gear I’ll be wearing to ensure there aren’t any issues with the fit of the tri suit or the other equipment. This workout will entail a 16-kilometer bike with a 20-minute warmup and a 10-minute cooldown. Both warmup and cooldown are not included in the total 16km bike ride. After I complete the cycle, I will transition to running with all my running gear. The run will consist of a 20-minute run and a 5-minute cooldown.

First off, this was an excellent workout and helped me transition from my bike to the run. The bike was uneventful. The only issue I had was that my watch, for some reason, stopped at the beginning of the bike ride, and I lost the first 4 miles of my data on my Garmin watch. Luckily, I had Strava going on my phone in the background. I did miss one turn but noticed it right away and got back on course. I started to feel pretty bad on the last few miles. Once I neared my home, I began to get ready for the transition. I got my feet out of my shoes and pedal with my feet on top. Once I got to my driveway, I hopped off. Put my bike in the garage, took off my helmet, and quickly got my running shoes on. I wasn’t feeling 100%, probably because I was a little dehydrated and didn’t fuel up for the workout like I usually do. So I just ran a quick mile near my house. The route was a simple out and back. I ran a good 8:52 minutes per mile. I learned a lot and didn’t like having to take out my feet from the shoes. So, I’ll probably leave them on and run in the transition area.

Key Takeaways:

Physical Preparation takes days. So make sure you are hydrating and eating properly leading up to your workouts!
Practicing the transitions is key to keeping your time down!

Training Statistics:

Cycling

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
01:07:35 hours	01:06:53 hours	16.68 mi.	14.96 mph	45.86 mph	716.86 ft.	513 kcal

Running

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
00:08:57 hours	00:08:52 hours	0.99 mi.	8:58 min/mile	6:33 min/mile	52.17 ft.	113 kcal

Training Day #48

Easy Bike Day!!

Today is Easy Bike Day. That is what is on the training schedule—sixty-loving minutes of enjoying the fall temperatures and scenery. The goal of this ride is to keep my pedal cadence around 80 to 90 RPM during the ride and to remain around Zone 1. Like I have said in a previous post, I have a hard time staying in Zone 1. I don’t feel that I get anything out of it. So, honestly, I saw around an hour of easy riding and took off riding. I chose a better route this morning that has lower traffic in the mornings, which was great. I also mostly made right-hand turns except for one, I believe.

When I started my ride this morning, I decided to keep my RPM around 80. Because during my last ride, it seemed that I would lose a lot of momentum as I climbed up hills. It made me more tired, and I seemed to work harder. As I looked at other people’s statistics on their rides, I saw that many people were able to keep their speeds around 20 MPH. Right now, I’m consistently around 12 to 13 MPH per ride. So I wanted to know if this is one of the secrets.

Overall, the ride was delightful and relaxing. I kept my RPM around 80 and made an effort to keep my RPM the same as I climbed some hills. It did help a lot, and I felt that I didn’t lose as much speed as I have historically. Now, this didn’t change my average rate by much, around 14.5 MPH. However, I did have a few stops at red lights. Only time will tell.

Key Takeaways:

Keeping a consistent RPM help reduce fatigue and speed lost during climbs (at least from my limited experience).
Enjoy the ride and the scenery!

Training Statistics:

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
00:56:15 hours	00:53:31 hours	12.96 mi.	14.53 mph	27.51 mph	460.96 ft.	647 kcal

Training Day #44

A Few Detours!!

Well, today’s bike ride was an interesting one. The training plan call for a long bike ride. This would be my longest bike ride so far in my training plan! I have been choosing my routes through Strava to see where most people are riding in my local area. I chose a course that is relatively low-traffic, except for one portion at the very beginning. Unfortunately, it is a stretch of about 1/8th of a mile, and I would have to make a left-hand turn into traffic. This turned out to be as hard as I thought it would be.

I started my ride with my freshly tuned bike from the shop. I dropped it off on Monday afternoon and didn’t expect to pick it up for at least a week. However, on Wednesday, I got a call from the shop saying it was ready. This was great because I didn’t have to miss a bike workout.

Anyway, I started my ride with basically a brand new bike. Once I got to the high traffic portion, I got on the road, but the traffic was too heavy for me to turn left without stopping traffic. So I chose to continue my ride and took the next right-hand turn. This allowed me to turn around and go with the traffic flow to take the road on a right-hand turn. This slight detour allowed me a safer option. Overall this ride provides great hills and scenery. I did get turned around once where I missed a turn, but I caught it pretty quickly.

This ride was a great learning experience of riding in heavy traffic and how to make it safer for myself and other drivers.

This will be the last update until Monday. I’ll be taking off the next two days of training. See you Monday!

Key Takeaways:

Stay away from heavy traffic roads during commuting times!
If you have to take a route with heavy traffic, try to make turns with traffic and not against it!

Training Statistics:

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
00:56:15 hours	00:53:31 hours	12.96 mi.	14.53 mph	27.51 mph	460.96 ft.	647 kcal

Training Day #40

Retaining Motivation #2

Remember the time where I said don’t miss more than two days of a routine. I do because I slide my Brick Workout to Sunday. It has been a jam-packed weekend. My daughter had softball practice on Saturday, and I can’t seem to get back on my routine. On top of that, I realized my workout schedule was messed up, and I missed two swim days last week. There weren’t populating on my schedule, so I assumed they were rest days. Well, here goes to learning!

So today, I did my Brick that was scheduled for yesterday. My motivation to get out of bed was rough, but my wife kicked me out after my alarm continued to go off for an hour. I got up, took care of my daughter, and drank a nice cup of coffee. After my wife got up, I got myself ready and motivated to go!

The Brick consisted of 60 minutes of the bike with varying intensities for 20 minutes, then a steady HR Zone 3 for 30 minutes and HR Zone 1 for 10 minutes. This was a good ride. I still need to get my bike tuned. Overall, it was a lovely day, and the ride was great. I did 13.58 miles in a little over an hour. For the upcoming race, it will be 20 miles.

I ended the bike ride at my house, then changed my shoes and left. I haven’t timed myself in the transition and wasn’t trying to go fast. I started on my run more quickly than I wanted at about 09:30 min/mile pace and slowed back to around 10:00 min/mile pace. The run focused on a high HR in Zone 3 due to the transition. I tried to maintain this for about 10 minutes. The last 10 minutes was to run in HR Zone 1, which I find very hard to do without just walking. I ended the run with a 5 minute cool down. I finished running with about 2.49 miles in about 25:09 minutes.

This marks the second brick workout I have completed and the last one before my race. The goal of the race is to finish! This next week comes a new week and a new chance to keep to my routine.

Key Takeaways:

Life happens, and family is essential. So don’t worry about rescheduling or skipping. Just keep in mind the “Two-Day Rule.”
Schedule time to maintain your equipment! I need to go drop off my bike before it is too late!

Training Statistics:

Bike

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
01:02:08 hours	00:59:12 hours	13.58 mi.	13.76 mph	27.96 mph	500.98 ft.	692 kcal

Run

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
00:25:09 hours	00:25:09 hours	2.49 mi.	10:05 min/mile	7:53 min/mile	73.16 ft.	298 kcal

Training Day #28

Bike!!!!

Today is a bike day! The schedule has an easy bike ride for today. It is a HR Zone workout, but I just used it as a normal bike day not pushing to hard. Just getting more comfortable on the bike. Total time for the cycling totaled to around 60 minutes. For this ride, I looked on Strava for some route recommendations since I’m still new to the area. I found a 15.76 mile route that should take me about 60 minutes to compete with an average 15 mph speed.

The overall ride was great! It felt good and I left in the morning to beat the summer heat. See I’m learning my from lessons! I decided to take the route counter clockwise and this was the best decision. There was a few hills, but I seemed to mostly go down the larger hills and climb the smaller ones. I’ll keep this in mind for hill workouts. The only key takeway is the same from my other bike rides. My bike needs to be tuned before my race in October. I reached out to two local bike shops. One had a three month waiting period (larger shop) and the other smaller shop was accepting bikes now for a week turn around. My bike is scheduled to be dropped of around the 10th!!!

Key Takeaways:

Bike routes matter for workouts!
Tune your bike! At least every year!!!

Elapsed Time	Moving Time	Distance	Average Speed	Max Speed	Elevation Gain	Calories Burned
01:07:52 hours	01:07:52 hours	15.76 mi.	13.94 mph	30.20 mph	632.22 ft.	795 kcal

Training Day #21

So, I’m not sure how I want to do my updates for my triathlon training. For now, I am going to post daily or close to daily training updates. Bear with me as I try to figure out the best way to structure these updates. This is the first week I’m posting my training sessions, but it is the 4th week of my training. That explains why my training day begin on day 21 instead of day 1.

I started the week with a brick session on Sunday. A brick is two back-to-back workouts. This is to train for the transition that occurs in a triathlon. I started with an 8.9-kilometer bike ride around my local area and then moved to a 3-kilometer run. I learned a lot from this training day.

During my bike ride, I noticed that shifting to my lower gears during steep hill climbs resulted in my chain skipping and the chain rubbing on the derailers. The last time I got the bike tuned has been at least four years (mainly because I haven’t ridden consistently since 2014). After the bike ride, I changed my cycling shorts for pair of running shorts and shoes because I didn’t own any tri-shorts to practice the transition. This type of transition made my workout a bit long and unrealistic. It took me about 5-7 minutes to change, and my running motivation began to wane. Nevertheless, I pushed through this inconvenience and completed the 3k run. The run felt ok; I didn’t push myself too hard and focused on the feeling of my legs to get a baseline of my performance.

Key Learning Points:

A tuned Bike is vital to maximizing performance.
Tri-shorts are essential gear for training.
Practicing the bike to run transition to get familiar with your performance