Good session for some

As mentioned in my previous post, Saturday's session was a long uninterrupted ride (no traffic lights) followed by a run off the bike - all designed to practise race pacing and nutrition. I saw this as an important session and recommended it to all the athletes I am coaching. Stef could not make the session, but Merryn, Jen, Mark and Elaine were all happy to make the long drive.

After a lovely Friday night spent with our neighbours (where we may have drunk a little too much red wine), we were running a little late on Saturday morning. Backing out of the garage we soon realised the situation was much worse as we had a flat tyre. After a lightning quick wheel change the Red Bull pit crew would have been proud of, we were back on our way. The spare tyre is a space saver tyre which means we were not supposed to exceed 80kph. Driving down the freeway to Tynong, I figured 100kph on a nice smooth freeway was probably equivalent to 80kph on country roads (easy to justify things when you are running late).

Predictably most of the other club members had already started the session when we arrived, but there were a few other late comers (including Jen) who were still getting ready. It was quite windy and Clint suggested that Jen and Elaine do laps on the short loop to reduce the time spent riding into a head wind.

Getting my stuff ready, I realised I'd left my Garmin watch at home. Doing a session to practice pacing without knowing my heart rate, power wattage or speed was kind of pointless. Luckily Clint had a bike computer and Garmin watch, so he lent me his Garmin 910. Starting my ride I was trying to get the watch to recognise my power meter when I realised it was on run mode. So I stopped the timer and switched the watch to bike mode and then proceeded to set configure it to detect the power meter on my bike (all whilst riding).

Clint and I did the big loop (48km) and although it was windy, we never seemed to ride into a direct head wind. For the first 30kms Clint and I rode side by side. But then I suddenly started to find it difficult. Looking at the borrowed Garmin 910, it appeared my power output was still good, I was just finding it hard to keep up with Clint. I figured Clint must have started putting in more effort, so I slowly dropped further behind. 10 kilometres later Clint was completely out of sight. It was around this time that I rode over a bump in the road and immediately realised why I had suddenly found it so hard to keep up. Stopping on the side of the road I confirmed that I had a flat tyre. It was a slow leak, so there was still a little air in the tyre (probably around 30psi), so I decided to ride the flat back to the car which I figured must have been close. I tried to find the distance on Garmin, but not being familiar with Clint's setup I could find any value that looked like distance, instead I found numerous fields that were showing zero. Turns out I was about 8km from the car which felt like forever, especially with the cross winds making the bike very unstable with the rim nearly rolling off the tyre on several occasions.

Once back at the car I pushed the stop button on the Garmin, only to see the message 'timer started'. This meant I had not been recording the first lap. After switching the watch from run to bike mode and then configuring the power meter, I had forgotten to restart the timer - I just wasn't my day.

With a new tube and the watch timer now activated I decided to do the smaller loop (22.5km instead). With the late start and puncture, I figured I'd cut my session a little short as we still needed to get home in time to pick up my girls. Thinking this shorter loop was going to be much easier, I was in for a big surprise. Unlike the big loop where we seemed to be mostly protected from the wind, the smaller loop was very exposed. At first it was the cross wind trying to blow me off the road. Then once I turned the corner it was a full on headwind that almost stopped me in my tracks - I was putting out 250 watts, but only travelling at 17kph. I started to laugh when I remembered that Clint had directed Elaine and Jen to do repeats of this short lap instead of tackling what turned out to be the much easier big lap.

70.5km was less than my planned 96km ride, but in such windy conditions it was still a reasonable session. I did a 4km run off the bike and felt good, especially when I ran with a tailwind. All-in-all I was reasonably satisfied that I'd salvaged something from the day, even if I didn't had a GPS record of half of it.

Of my athletes, Elaine was the first to finish her ride - 3 laps of the terribly windy short lap. She was not impressed, but still went out for a 2km run. Merryn and Mark were next. They had done the big lap and then 2 small laps, however both were still in good spirits. Lastly Jen (who started late with Elaine) finished her 4 laps of windy short lap (90km in total), she actually looked like she'd done it easy. Merryn and Jen did a short run, but Mark is still suffering from a foot injury so escaped this last part of the session.

Elaine spent a lot of time complaining, so I knew the distances she had achieved were spot on. But I was worried I made things too easy for Merryn and Jen. However Merryn later texted Elaine that her glute muscles were so sore she struggled to drive home and Jen later reported that she felt sick for several hours after the session. So other than me (who didn't really do enough), everyone else had the perfect session (ie. it was supposed to be really hard).