This week my friend Mike decided we need to try out the Team Time Trial at Breakaway Computraining. He put a team of four together and we went over to check it out. They have a very nice facility with eight CompuTrainers setup facing two very large screens. Each team sets up on one side of the room or the other. The course that was selected is one that the local TriFury triathlon club uses outside, a little over 13 miles. One of the cool things was that you can actually draft off of your teammates. That is a skill that I have to work on, I either seemed to be too close or too far back. The winner is determined by the 3rd rider over the finish line. That encourages you to really work as a team.
I thought it was a lot of fun and definitely want to try it again. It is definitely a challenge to figure out how to ride with a group on the CompuTrainers. Looking back on it now I know I wasn’t working hard enough when I was leading. I felt like I could have done the entire ride at the Watts I was holding while leading. For me that means I needed to be working probably another 20% harder. I also wasn’t always in the best draft position, but the few times I got there I can see that it would be easy to recover and then take the lead and ride hard again. Especially with working with four riders. I heard the first groups say they were going to switch every 15 seconds. I think that would be way to fast for me until I had a few more rides under my belt. I’d prefer to pull hard for 2 or 3 minutes at a time and then rest for 6 to 9 drafting the other 3 riders. Then repeat. Do that four times, race is over.
If you have never done it, I highly recommend checking it out. Definitely a lot of fun!
The rest of the week
The rest of the week was pretty standard. Saw some good progress in my swimming and managed to get under 1:20 for some 100s on Monday. Didn’t manage that again the rest of the week, but at least there is hope. I definitely need to work on my kicking and ordered some fins.
The CompuTrainer rides are getting harder as each week I keep building for another two weeks. I feel like my legs are definitely getting strong and I’m glad I included some weight lifting in the program this year.
Running hasn’t been much fun, it has been cold, windy and slushy. Not exactly my kind of running weather. I managed to get out for a 10K yesterday afternoon after riding for 2 hours on the trainer. Doing those bricks is definitely something I want to do more of this season.
The weight loss continues. Weighed in at 162 lbs this morning!