The Road to 2012

One of the toughest parts of the transition from kayak to Ironman training is the emphasis on massive, lengthy endurance rides on the bike. I recently got myself a little iPod shuffle that keeps me company when the rain starts to come down and the road gets long (and the rain HAS come down on me, for my last two 4+ hour rides!) so the sanity is still intact, but that’s by no means a permanent thing. Below, we have a picture of me before my 82 mile trip up to Gettysburg (left) and a picture of me after the 4.5 hour trip. My wonderful mother who came to pick me up so far North of DC took these pics, so thanks so much to her!

The basic idea of the Ironman training is to spend as much time on the bike as I spend swimming and running combined. The swim training I’m doing focuses almost exclusively on technique, as this is where I’m going to be able to eke out the biggest gains for the 2.4 miles I’ll have to swim for Ironman Louisville this August. The cycling will give me the leg strength I need to do the marathon after the 112 mile bike leg, and since running introduces such a high chance of injury into the training I do a bit less of that than a typical marathoner would on a weekly basis. That funky rear wheel is a HED Jet 90 with a Powertap hub built into it–I’ll be using this power meter both for training and for pacing during my big races this year.

More on the Ironman training later; I’m excited about the website, and it feels good to complete this first post!

crazy, training, triathlon, weather, biking, ironman