Six Weeks 'til Race Day: Another Brick in the Wall

Pink Floyd was one of those rock groups that you either hated or loved, and there was generally no in between, except for me, who detested them except for that one popular song "Another Brick in the Wall." The reason I loved the song was the term "another brick in the wall." It just stood for so many things symbolically. Day's over? Another brick in the wall. Dishwasher unloaded? Another brick in the wall. I realize you can carry this metaphor too far and brick yourself into several literary corners, but I still use the dadgummed expression.

And with training bricks, here's another way to abuse the phrase all over again. Six weeks out and my weekend training is now focused on bricks--run based ones, bike based ones, hard ones, easy ones, and all sorts in between. "Bike-run-in combination." Hard stuff. Necessary stuff.

Last weekend was a killer. The wind in Dallas was blowing 40-45 mph and it was late afternoon before I could get on the bike, so you know it was really howling that time of day. Our windiest day of the year so far. Perfect conditions for my 2.5 hour bike/30 minute run on Saturday. But time and weather wait for no man, or woman, or triathlete, so I girded up my loins and loaded the bike for White Rock, where I watched EMTs rescuing capsized boats whilst I pumped my tires (this is a true statement. No one seemed to have drowned, but there were 3-4 small upside down boats that rescue craft had to go out and tow in with along with their damp owners).

Off we go, downwind for the first part of the ride, not too bad, crusing smoothly and then here's the first major turn and whammo! Blast winds straight into your face, causing that nice light bike to shimmy and shake and your sweaty palms to grip those tiny little areobars (why did I get the short ones???). Legs pedaling hard, but moving about 12.5 mph even downshifting like mad. Fun? I had four laps of the lake to contemplate with this fun.

I kept thinking the downwind portions (which logically should be about half the trip, but illogically, as Spock would say, seemed to only be about a quarter of the trip) would make up for the lost speed of the into the wind portions, but it really didn't. I would average between 15-18 mph on the downwind parts (sometimes a bit more if there was a slight downhill), but struggle around 12-14 mph on the upwind areas. My average pace for the 2.5 hour ride (37 miles) was around 14.2 mph which is slow (not creepingly slow, but slow). And that was pushing it on the windward portions, which you had to do or just topple over.

However, I told myself this: Self, if you can do this ride, you can handle anything that old Galveston tosses at you wind-wise, because anything stronger than this and it's a stupid tropical storm (looked it up. Tropical storm winds are above 38 mph. So really, I was already riding in one, at least from a wind standpoint). Great training ride for the real thing. And I did handle it. Not terribly fast, true, but within my parameters for my race (which is 14-15 mph for the 56 miles) and I didn't fall over and collapse from it either (although I did consider canceling my dental appointment next week since I felt that I had already had my teeth sandblasted clean). I managed to jump off the bike and still go for a 30 min run (2.7 miles) which wasn't terribly slow in nature, although I did take a couple of quick walk breaks during it, and I was pretty glad to see the Garmin hit the 30 minute mark.

On Sunday I had to get up and do a 60 minute run. Friends and neigbors, I am here to tell you that I was tired on that run. I know part of the training is teaching your body how to run tired (so it won't be so shocked when you ask it to do just that on race day), but this was not easy--and the wind was still howling, making my downwind running legs just delightful. Still, I stuck it out, doing the planned run 8 walk 2 the entire time, and never really bonked or hit the wall, just felt tired and a bit heavy legged.

This week I get two days off (yeah!) in preparation for the Big Rehearsal on Sunday. This will be a 3.5 hour bike (very close to race distance) followed by a 45 minute tempo run. I will sleep, pack, dress, eat and hydrate as if it were race day morning. I'll try to hit the trails about the same time of day that I estimate I will hit the bike portion on the triathlon (around 8:45 a.m. or so) so I know how my body reacts to things at that time of day.

I'm praying the wind gods go elsewhere this weekend, but if they don't, I'll manage!