As you can see it was one thing after another and the aggregate of the stress certainly was putting a toll on all of us, but the pain from loss subsided, the truck got fixed, my leg got better, we found another tenant, Sam’s surgery was a success and he is back to duty, we have recovered most the professionals who left, the refinance came through and best of all we finally started to make some headway with Shanna’s battle with Lyme. You can see on the chart above (the blue portion measures fitness) how these challenges affected my training especially the blood clot as I lost nearly three months of training.

 

Power Meter

So with the bike being the focus I decided to invest in a power meter because of effectiveness it offers in training. In terms of power a watt is a watt is a watt. So there no variation like there is with heart rate that can be influenced by heat, humidity, and/or one’s hydration for the day. The first thing I would need to do with this new tool was to determine my Functional Threshold Power or FTP which is the power output a ride can theoretically ride for one hour. Once that number is derived all workouts then use that number to set intensity. My first FTP test on March 8th resulted in an FTP 220W. I would do two more test to see how much improvement I was making from the training. On April 6th the test showed 230 watts and the last test was on May 5th revealed 243 watts. In two months I had raised my FTP 23 watts a increase of roughly 10%. My bike workouts consisted of a block of training (three weeks) focused on VO2 max and then switching to building time at threshold pace. The latter workouts would be at 4:1 work to recovery ratio so for every four minutes of work I would rest for one minute. My last threshold workout was on May 26th which was 4X8mins aiming for 243 watts. What I learned from that session was that 243 watts would be too much for me if I wanted to have any lungs left for the run section. With this information I set my race goal for 220 watts of normalized power.

 

Running

For this race I decided to start doing track session to help increase my running speed. Luckily for me the Jacksonville Track Club (JTC) and Enjoy Fitness held workouts near my work at Bolles High School on Wednesdays evenings. Coach Paul and Joy and all the runners have been a great community to run with. My first workout on April 11th was 10X.25 mile with 1 minute recovery. My best .25 was a pace of 6:47/mile. On June 20th, the Wednesday after the race we ran 5X.50 mile with 2.5 minutes of recovery. My best at double the length was at 6:03/mile pace. The track work was definitely helping as we will see in the race. The hardest workout was May 23 where we did five stints of three laps of the track at 200 meters hard running and 100 meters jogging. The heat index had the temperature at 93 degrees and my heart rate was redling the whole time. For me it was a brutal workout. After seeing from these track workouts that I was improving I set a goal for the race at pace of 7:30/mile.

 

New Bike Setup, Beets, Cherry Juice and Shaved Legs

All athletes are looking for an edge to give them an advantage. I had bike fitting done with Pro Tri Fit which resulted in a completely new front end for JeddyOne as well as new seatpost to move me more forward. The new front end allows for great flexibility as I continue to work on the setup to optimize the three-legged stool of power, comfort, and aerodynamics. I read that beets and tart cherry juice were helpful for endurance athletes so I began loading up on them the week of the race. Hard to say whether they helped or not but I am going to lean on the science that says there was an improvement in athletes that consumed these two foods. Another measure I took to improve my aerodynamics was to shave my legs after seeing some work Specialized performed in the wind tunnel that demonstrated a significant decrease in times in 40KM Time Trial which was about 90 seconds over the 25 miles or roughly a savings of 3.6 seconds per mile. The length of this particular race was 15 miles which could possibly be a savings of 54 seconds. I will say that I felt like was moving through the air pretty smoothly.

 

 

The Race

This would be the first race I would participate in that used a time trial start which I really found to be quite cool. Athletes were put into the water five seconds apart. The swim took place in the St. John’s River and with the current made for ridiculous, olympic speed like times. The 15-mile bike segment routed us through downtown Jacksonville out onto MLK pass I-95 and then back towards the Hyatt Hotel along the river. The 5K run portion had the athletes running along the St. John’s River towards the Fuller Warren bridge and then back.

I completed the race in just under 70 minutes with at 1:09:49.500 good enough for 25th place out of 241 participants. In my age group of 40-44 I came in 5th place and out of 159 males I came in 25th place.

 

The Good

This was a very good race for me not only in terms of the results but also due to the challenges I faced coming into this race namely losing months due the blood clot and Shanna’s health. The race was another step forward as my bike was nearly as fast as year ago (22.9 vs 22.7) but with a heart rate five beats fewer on average (172 vs 167). The effect was a run that was over three minutes faster (26:23 vs 23:12). I had two goals the first being normalized power of 220 watts and I did 222 watts and to run at 7:30/mile pace and I did a 7:28. So I feel like it was mission accomplished. This was also the first time I planned the workout schedule and individual workouts from base to build to taper to race. In the previous races I had purchased training plans.

​

Improvement Against My Benchmark

The race was another step towards closing the gap to the age group leaders. One other athlete in particular I have been able using as a benchmark. This is the 4th race we have completed together going back to 2016. As the graph below shows I have closed the gap from T1 through the Run from over 12 minutes to under 3 minutes. Because of the strong current for this race’s swim it doesn’t reflect my swim pace and so I choose not include that segment in the analysis.